MURDER CHICKENS ON MARS is out!

Let me try to explain the existence of Murder-Chickens on Mars, and help people understand, if not appreciate, what this book is.

I am the son of a Mechanic. I grew up around cars, fixing flat tires, pumping gas, taking things apart and trying to put them back together. I was an okay mechanic, but not gifted. My father and brother were both very gifted. But I could do breaks and exhaust pipes, replace whatever needed replacing, taking breaks and engines apart and put them together. I’m also the grandson of a Carpenter, and along the way I learned to hammer a nail, lay a beam, bevel, mortice, measure and cut. And along the way, I had other experiences.

I have always been driven to examine, to understand, to try to figure out how things work. There’s an elegance to the way a machine or a body works, to the precision gears of a clock or a social system, the intricacies and harmonies. My world is one of blood and chaos. And perhaps because of that, I’m desperate to understand to make sense of things.

I’m fascinated by the overlooked, by the hidden corners, all the stuff we take for granted. I think I was a journalist once, because of that. And a teacher. And a historian. This world of randomness and horror, I want to unravel it, perhaps to find a way to to make it less random and less horrific.

There’s a picture I saw many years ago that will haunt me the rest of my life – a naked Vietnamese child running desperately from Napalm. I look at that face, and all she knows is fear and terror, blind panic. She doesn’t know why this is happening. She doesn’t know about the faceless bloodless men and the chains of decisions that lead to them trying to incinerate her, or being monstrously indifferent to her incineration. The clock of god ticks and ticks, the gears work, and a little girl flees from napalm How is it that we live in a world where this happens? It seems to me that the only way to stop it is to understand – that’s the first step.

In fiction, there’s a part of me that questions. I rebelled against Tolkien’s Orcs being mindless evil long before that was fashionable. I wondered about the Indians in Cowboys and Indians. The appointed villains. I was never interested in heroes. Conan left me cold. When I read Tarzan, the stories I loved best were Pal Ul Don or visits to strange societies. Burroughs had many flaws, but the man knew how to build a world. Equally I was drawn to H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle – they were both about making sense of things, although their characters felt very differently about the answers they found.

So, I’ve always amused myself writing little. I don’t even know what to call them. speculative essays? Dissections of a pulp world, or Star Trek, or some comic or this or that, just trying to take something presented and make sense of it – what was the history, what was the motive, how does something end up here.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote the Cthulhu mythos. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, and if you’re not then look it up. Basically, it’s just colour – he invented an alien God, and then more Alien gods, a dark satannic bible, the Necronomicon, and passages. There was more folderol, he recycled and reused bits, some of it made it as story ideas, and some of it was just colour. His friends Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard also played the game, and they’d trade off with references. It’s all just colour, mainly. But you know, play the game long enough, and a body of lore builds up.

So one day, I had this idea: What if Cthulhu was a real god? Not in the sense of being an actual God as presented in the stories. But real as in the sense most Gods are – imaginary or mythical

figures in religions or cults. What if the Cthluhu Cult was a real religion? And what if you could read all the lore attributed by Lovecraft and company, to deconstruct that religion?

Two of the big gods of the Pantheon were Azathoth and Yog Sothoth – both of these seem to derive from Egyp’s Thoth. That’s interesting. Azza was a goddess of the peoples of the Arabic peninsula. Azathoth is certainly a combination – so originally Lovecraft’s Azathoth was Azza-Thoth, perhaps originally mated, eventually merged, representing a joining of a group of of Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Arabians. That’s an interesting start. Bit by bit I treated all the lore as clues, deconstructing the Cthlhu cult as an evolving religion, weaving it in and out of actual history, showing how each historical development affected the cult, altering it, accumulating new gos and transforming old ones. When it was done, I had a nifty bit of work. Very satisfying.

I did this – I delved into the history of Lost Continents, dissecting the myths and folklore of Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu, and exposing their nonsense, and at the same time, discovering actual

genuine lost continents – Zealandia, the Kerguelen Plateau, the Mascarene Plateau.

I delved into the biology of muppets as real animals, tracing their evolutionary pathways and origins, and exploring their childlike minds and capacity for speech. I explored Mars, both the real planet and Burroughs fictional world and matched them piece by piece. I dissected Kaiju to figure out how they functioned. A meme poster about Bear Cavalry and a dismissive comment about domestication led me down one path. A speculation about how Atlantis would have faired, or not faired in the Age of Exploration (answer – badly). I just do these things.

The Inuit developing an Agricultural complex and a proto-civilization north of the Arctic circle? That’s mine. How about if the Galapagos Islands had grown into a mini-continent, say the size of a small European country, and the population of finches, tortoises and iguanas had grown and diversified to true behemoths? I did that.

I explored evolution, biology, physics, the ins and outs of history and human nature, why language develops, tool use, trade. I suppose you could call it world building. But in a lot of ways, it was kind of like building mental clockwork – figuring out the real and unreal and making it work.

I enjoyed it, did it, tucked it away. Once in a while I’d run across someone like Chris Nigro or Bill Hillman who appreciated it, and who’d host bits and pieces.

So anyway, years ago, when Five Rivers was publishing my first Novel, the Mermaid’s Tale, I’d picked up a ‘how to self publish’ by AP Fuchs, and I thought I’d give it a try.

Back then, I had this idea that with my first novel already published, and my second contracted, I was going to have a writing career. Like with real publishers and everything.

So self publishing was a bit of a lark I decided to try it out, just for the experience. I decided to publish something I thought had no commercial potential at all – something no real publisher would want or even dream of publishing

So I took three of these… “speculative essays” – Lovecraft, Muppets and Lost Continents, stitched them together, ginned up a cover and released them as a book –DAWN OF CTHULHU

I didn’t think they’d sell, and I didn’t really care. They were just three really nice pieces of writing, and I wanted them out in the world. Mission accomplished – I had two books out – Dawn of Cthulhu and the Mermaid’s Tale. It was a nice feeling. I was proud of both my offspring, even if one was inexplicable and confusing and I was the only person who would ever love it.

But back then, I thought I had a career about to get going. Funny how it goes. Silly me.

Anyway, now and then, I’d delve back into that kind of country – FALL OF ATLANTIS was another like Dawn. BEAR CAVALRY  a third. Axis of Andes, a more formal alt history project came in their wake. And more books – outright fiction, outright fact.

So that’s what  MURDER CHICEKNS ON MARS  is. Sort of fact, sort of fiction, explorations of forgotten corners, and deep dives into unreal landscapes I still don’t know if there’s a market, sometimes I’m embarrassed to share it with people. But I think it’s good work, and good thinking, and if it’s a little silly, I’m not ashamed.

So that’s MURDER CHICKENS ON MARS, four speculative essays (technically five but the last one is really short – more a bonus extra), which I think are lively, thought provoking and clever. Maybe you’ll be entertained, maybe you’ll learn something in the process of reading.

There are Murder Chickens in the Book. There are also Martians. But the Murder Chickens aren’t actually on Mars. I just liked the title. If this upsets you… too bad.

The Speculative Essays themselves?

From Canals to Pyramids, from an Artificial moon, to the legendary Face on Mars, it’s mankind’s history with a Martian civilization that evaporated away.

Before the Legendary Monsterverse, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from 1954 to 1975, Toho Studios built its own cinematic universe around the King of Monsters..

The Silurian Hypothesis and an exploration of possible prior civilizations, from Cephalopods to Murder-Chickens, and where they might be now.

A deep dive into the anatomy and evolution of famous reptiles, Silurians and Sea Devils from Doctor Who and Sleestak in Land of the Lost.

Bonus: Observers and Aliens

They’re not coming to visit.

Does any of this intrigue? Be my guest, check it out…