A Few Words with Martin L. Shoemaker

What are the origins of this story?

In 2012, Richard Johnson, a great writer out of Melbourne, Australia, won the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. Rich couldn’t make the trip to the International Space Development Conference to accept the award, so he asked me (as the second place winner) to accept in his place. That resulted in my having dinner and drinks with Ben Bova, Baen editor/author Tony Daniel, and Bill Ledbetter (the contest administrator and a talented writer). It also resulted in my having lunch with a table of space industry insiders, including Buzz Aldrin! So I owe Rich a few pints of beer whenever I finally see him in person.

And every time this story is reprinted, I add another pint to that debt. After lunch, I attended Buzz’s presentation on his Mars Cycler plan, and I was hooked. I jotted down one brief story note: “Something aboard a Mars cycler.” I wrote down a lot of other story notes that day, so this one could’ve just gotten lost in the shuffle; but a couple of months later, I was musing on the idea in the shower, and I remembered something Buzz said: “It’s like an express train to Mars,” express meaning not “fast” but “no stops along the way.” Something clicked in my head, twice: first I put together the words “Aldrin Express”; and then immediately after came the title, “Murder on the Aldrin Express.” With a title like that, how could I resist?

I knew from the title that I had a hard science fiction mystery. I’m not an extensive mystery reader, but I’m fond of the fair mysteries of Ellery Queen: all the clues are there, with plenty of chances for the reader to put them together. I’m also (as evidenced by my bibliography) a big fan of hard science fiction. So I wanted a fair mystery in which the vital clue lay in the science of Mars. That meant I needed a competent “detective” to figure it out. I decided on the ship’s captain, but that immediately left me with a new question: why is a competent captain commanding a ship that goes back and forth to Mars but never stops? Wouldn’t he want to explore? And so I came up with Captain Nick Aames, a bitter, misanthropic man who LIKES this duty because it keeps him far away from almost all of humanity. But that makes for an unlikable protagonist, so on the advice of friends I added his best friend, the very likable Chief Anson Carver. The combination “clicked,” and the story grew naturally from there.

What are some of your favorite short stories?

There are lots of modern stories I enjoy (many of them written by friends!); but like many people, my “favorites” were stories I discovered in my youth (many in the pages of Asimov’s). There are lots of classics, but I’d like to call out three that are less commonly known yet have really stuck with me through the years.

“Enemy Mine” by Barry B. Longyear. It seems odd to call this one “less commonly known,” given that Longyear won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell for it; but that was a generation or more ago, and I don’t hear people discuss it much today. If you can reach the end of this story without choking up, you are stone. (Just don’t talk to me about the film. More important, don’t talk to Longyear about it!)
“Gift of a Useless Man” by Alan Dean Foster. This is, in my opinion, the perfect short story. It’s the story of a criminal stranded on a distant planet and the surprising way he spends his life. I can’t describe more than that without ruining it, and this is a story that should never be ruined. It’s in Foster’s collection With Enemies Like This, and it’s well worth hunting down.
“Fighting Madness” by P.J. Plauger (yes, programmers, THAT P.J. Plauger) is THE formative influence on all of my fiction. First appearing in Analog Annual (edited by Ben Bova), this was the story that sparked my interest in hard science fiction. This is the standard I try very hard to meet. Combine the intelligent action of this story with the visuals (but NOT the illogical plots) of Space: 1999, and you can see what was in my head when I wrote “Murder on the Aldrin Express”. That’s the feel of my Blue Collar Space stories.

If you could make something from a story or novel you've written a reality, what would it be?

I’m going to go big and say the Aldrin Express from this story (plus two others so far, and more to come). The why is two-fold. First, being a hard science fiction guy, I can’t endorse “poof!” wishes. A ship like the Aldrin (which has grown considerably since I wrote this story) doesn’t happen without a significant space infrastructure to support it. So it’s a twofer: to get my one wish, I have to get a bigger wish, a spacefaring society.

And the second reason is the flip side of the first: the Aldrin enables that spacefaring society. Buzz Aldrin’s cycler plan uses orbital mechanics to guide the ship, not propellant (or at least not much), so it enables larger-scale transport to and from Mars. As my Aldrin stories grow, the ship is becoming a means of “bulk shipment” to Mars, allowing us to build larger, more sustainable bases and settlements.

So I don’t wish for much: just space travel, Mars colonies, and a really cool spaceship!

Do you have anything coming out in the months ahead?

I have three publications coming out soon: “Early Warning” in Analog, “The Vampire’s New Clothes” in Galaxy’s Edge, and “Meet the Landlord” in the Baen Anthology Little Green Men Attack!, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I also have two reprints coming from Digital Science Fiction (“Il Gran Cavallo” and “Pallbearers”), and “Today I Am Paul” has been selected for Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction (and for another anthology which has not yet been announced, but which I’m sure will interest your readers).

As for what I’m working on now: I’m about 80% through a new Carver and Aames novel, telling the story of their mission to Mars and then the first voyage of the Aldrin Express. I keep getting distracted by other side projects, but that novel is my primary focus until it’s done.