Under the overall topic of alien encounters, Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" was a fascinating and inventive sci-fi tale that appeared in the old magazines that were chucked into the recycler during the war years. Since I love the old science fiction pulps, I knew this was something I would enjoy. 

Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" takes place on the red planet, barely explored with telescopes and populated by Burroughs with four-armed green tharks and Dejah Thoris. We see the use of a classic mythology idea to craft a story about life on Mars, this time as a strange trip through strange lands with even stranger beasts.

This was an adventure yarn about a group of explorers who landed on Mars to explore the planet. They've been acclimatized to the thin atmosphere so they could breathe without masks. Each specialist goes off to find whatever wonders are hidden over the next horizon. One man, the overall narrator named…

A formula constructed to make exciting stories, created by Lester Dent, he of Doc Savage fame. This formula was also touted by Michael Moorcock for new writers looking to get into the short story markets in the 1970's. Lester was able to write whole novels in a single week, and Michael Moorcock wrote one in a single weekend. This methodology can be expanded to any length and to any genre.

The formula was originally used by Lester to build 6,000 word stories, of which he wrote…

"The Elements" is a song which was written by the very clever Tom Lehrer in 1959. It is sung to the tune of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General", from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. The song is a big list of all the discovered chemical elements, with each element being included in no particular logical order, which is to say that something like atomic numbers or alphabetical order is NOT what drives the list.…