Old Venus: George R.R. Martin *SIGNED*

Old Venus: George R.R. Martin *SIGNED**SIGNED* From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughss Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradburys The Long Rain to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewiss Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earths next nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue

*SIGNED* From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.