"A Better Sandmouse Trap?" Topic
4 Posts
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robert piepenbrink  | 15 Aug 2021 9:58 a.m. PST |
All you old SF fans. George RR Martin in the intro to Old Mars, talks about all the wonderful places and creatures which went extinct when our first probes landed on Mars and wiped out all the canals and lost cities. One of the creatures was the Martian Sandmouse, which he attributes to Andre Norton.
I don't believe him. I think I've tracked down every Norton which even alludes to Mars. No sandmice. No luck with Google, either. But I don't think me made it up. In the interest of a richer and more diverse ecology for my purely imaginary traditional Mars, can any of you remember such a creature? And can you remember the title or author of the story? |
| Ed Mohrmann | 15 Aug 2021 1:25 p.m. PST |
No Robert. And I ain't gonna look at the 130 books
she published (some as Andrew North, some as Allen
Weston but AFAIK none as Alice Mary Norton) nor any
of her short stories (which number in the scads). IDK what year Martin did Old Mars, but Google can show
you pix of 'mice' on Mars, probably rock formations which
might be where he got the idea. Andre Norton passed
in 3/2005 so doubt she ever saw lander pix of those
'mice'. |
 martinjpayne1964 | 16 Aug 2021 4:17 a.m. PST |
Poul Anderson's 1951 short story 'Duel on Syrtis'? |
| robert piepenbrink | 09 Sep 2021 3:07 p.m. PST |
Thanks, martin. I have that one--and the sequel. Sadly, the mice are pretty much our mice. No distinctive features mentioned. Ed, you're not? I wouldn't either. But the stuff set within the Solar System is a much smaller stack, and I did run them for scenes set on Mars or references to Mars. No luck. That said, Given Martin specifically said he picked it up from an Andrew North, I bet it is something he remembers from his youth. I can see myself tracking down Captain Future and Lucky Starr stories to crack this one. |
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discovers a better way to fill in hollow plastic bases.
