You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clark World Citizens. Happy holidays. I hope this podcast finds you very, very well. I hope that you got to spend time with family.

Or do whatever brought your heart joy. There's not much news to report, so I'm just going to jump right into the next story for December

2014. This story is titled The Emperor of Mars and is by Alan M. Steele.

Alan Steele made his first sale in 1988.

In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel,

Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locust Pole as best first novel of the year.

His other books include the novels Clark County Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night,

The Weight, the weight, the tranquility alternative, a king of infinite space, ocean space, chrono space, coyote, coyote rising, spin Drift, Galaxy Blues, Coyote Horizon, Coyote Destiny,

Hex, and a YA novel Apollo's Outcast.

He has won three Ugo awards in 1996 for his novella The Death of Captain Future in

1998 for his novella where angels fear to tread and most recently in 2011 for his novel The Emperor of Mars, which you will now be hearing.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines covering science and business assignments and is now a full-time writer living in Waitley, Massachusetts with his wife Linda.

You can find Alan at his website, Alan Steele with an e.com.

So I invite you to sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Out here, there's a lot of ways to go crazy.

Out here, there's a lot of ways to go crazy.

It cooped up in a passenger module not much larger than a trailer,

and by the time you reach your destination,

you may have come to believe that the universe exists only within your own mind.

It's called solipsism syndrome, and I've seen it happen a couple of times.

Share that same module with five or six guys who don't get along very well, and after three months you'll be sleeping with a knife tape to your thigh.

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