Synopsis | Background | Characters | MS. Info | Sample Chapters | Contents
Writing Inventory | Jack Commer | Nonprofit Ladies

The novel, The Martian Marauders, and all writing on this page copyright 2007 by Michael D. Smith

Synopsis

After the evacuation of the entire world’s population to Mars, the crew of spaceship Typhoon I surveys dead planet Earth. The Supreme Commander of the United System Space Force informs the crew that archeological ruins have just been discovered on humanity’s adopted planet.

Typhoon Captain Jack Commer and his copilot brother Joe investigate the murder of the official sent to hunt down newly-discovered Martian saboteurs. In the deep desert, USSF soldiers battle Martian terrorists armed with shatterguns that crack people into millions of pieces of glass.

The Typhoon is damaged in an attempt to destroy a Martian death ray on Mercury. Jack and Joe decide to use the ship’s escape craft to take a malfunctioning nuclear weapon to the planet’s surface, but before they can do that, John, the impetuous youngest Commer brother left in command, rams the Typhoon down to the enemy base in a suicide attack, killing all crewmembers except Jack and Joe.

Marooned on the polluted Earth and dying, Joe Commer hallucinates alien beings training healing rays on his brother and himself. They wake in a prison cell on Venus. To their astonishment, a street thug from Marsport named Sam Hergs has gained control over the Martians and named himself their Emperor.

Jack and Joe escape, then spy on Emperor Hergs ordering the Martians to use their telekinetic Amplified Thought program to vaporize all planets in the solar system except Venus. The Martians radiate a one-way telepathy, and the brothers realize that the Martians, in thrall to their human emperor, have no wish to destroy.

Jack and Joe steal a small pleasure craft to escape from Venus. They interrogate Amav, a young woman brainwashed to become the Emperor’s consort. Jack falls in love with her, and to his astonishment, freed from Sam Hergs, she reciprocates.

Jack and Joe are appointed pilots of the newly-built Typhoon II with orders to destroy Hergs’ Venusian base. But Jack discovers Amav heading to Venus in her pleasure craft and he falls apart, screaming to his entire crew that she wanted sex with Hergs all along.

Following Amav, Jack and Joe enter the Venusian base disguised as Chef Service personnel. Jack confronts Hergs just as the Emperor is about to consummate his marriage to Amav. Declaring she’s been true to Jack, Amav saves Jack’s life with her golden Martian Empress shattergun.

Freed from Hergs, the Martians offer to accompany Jack and Amav on the Typhoon II mission to Alpha Centauri, hoping to use their Amplified Thought program to repair the damage from yet another space war humanity has blundered into.

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Background

The Martian Marauders and the history of the evacuation of Earth in 2033 have been with me since the mid-sixties. I was in the eighth grade in the fall of 1965. That fall and the following spring I wrote 110 handwritten pages of the novel, basically a Hardy Boys adventure set in space. When I decided, as a fun experiment, to complete the story twenty years later in 1986, the new Part II finally freed the Commers boys from their Venusian prison and allowed me to explore some of my current life themes as I glibly explained away the scientific ludicrousness of 1966 Part I. And Part II’s stark contrast to the childlike Part I was delightful.

But I had no desire to revise The Martian Marauders into a completed novel until elements of the Jack Commer universe came into the 2000-03 Nonprofit Ladies.

Here’s how the Commer universe and The Jack Commer Trilogy came about:

In September 1962 I wrote a story, “Voyage to Venus,” for a fifth grade spelling assignment. The story introduced my hero Jack Commer, who appeared in several other stories during 1963. I recall reading these science fiction stories in class to the wide-eyed attention of my classmates.

My first “book,” in the spring of 1964, was a fifty-five page notebook called Trip to Mars. Starring Jack Commer and his three brothers, this story outlined the dropping of the planet-destabilizing Xon bomb on October 8, 2033 to end World War IV, and the subsequent evacuation of the Earth’s population to Mars. Many of its details were echoed in next year’s The Martian Marauders and some, like passengers shells catastrophically breaking off mother ships, came to be part of Nonprofit Ladies. The notebook also included a senseless Kennedy-like assassination, still fresh in my mind from the previous November.

Finishing The Martian Marauders in 1986 called for a fast-paced sequel. In Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF, I had a lot of fun with the ramifications of one-way Martian telepathy, Phil Sperry’s hopeless infatuation with Amav, Alpha Centaurian brainwashing, and Jack’s orders for the remaining sane people to keep diaries (chapters 4-7) so he could track the moment when they converted to worship of the Alpha Centaurian Emperor.

Then Nonprofit Ladies came along. In 2000 I started using accumulated notes, photos, and news articles, saved for years, as the basis for a new novel. But before long the Commers got involved; the time travel concept definitely demanded science fiction, and it became apparent that copilot Joe Commer, the second brother, required a lot of attention. As NPL was being written, the problem of congruency to MM and JC came up. Much of even the 1966 version still dominates NPL (for instance, the destruction of the outer solar system and the evacuation from Earth), but NPL could alter any aspect of the previous two novels. To stabilize the three novels, I developed massive facts, character, and chronology files.

By this time I began to think of all three manuscripts as part of a trilogy, and revised MM and JC in line with the finished NPL. As I went into Draft 2 of The Martian Marauders I began to see that it was going to have a new resonance. The second version was a clean draft--no major structural problems, problematic chapters, or psychic messes. Yet because of the need to update writing in one case thirty-seven years old (and wonderfully childish!), in the other seventeen, Draft 2 had a rough draft feel through most of it as I radically altered the mood of the 1966 era boy’s story and 1986's adult answer to it.

Then it was time to do the same for 1986’s Jack Commer. These two novels taught me so much about having fun with the writing, and keeping a storyline flowing, that I realized to my chagrin that the spur to all this, Nonprofit Ladies, itself needed a major revision. More on that.

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Characters

Jack Commer
Typhoon I pilot

Joe Commer
Typhoon I copilot

Jim Commer
Typhoon I navigation officer

John Commer
Typhoon I sensor officer

General William C. Scott
Supreme Commander of the United System Space Force

General John J. Douglas
The Alien Hunter from the Alpha Centauri war

Sam Hergs
Emperor of the Martians

Amav February
Consort to the Martian Emperor

Dar
Leader of the Martian Council to the Emperor

Huey Vespertine
USSF Academy dropout and AresNet commentator

Phil Sperry
Typhoon II engineer and physician

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MS. Info

Written	1965-66, 1986, 2003-2005
Chapters	19
MS.	393 pages (Times New Roman 12, double-spaced)
Words	102,000
Currently input in	Word 2000
Previously published	No parts yet published

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Sample Chapters

1. Survey	The Typhoon I surveys the dead Earth. Word comes from General Scott that archeological ruins have just been discovered on Mars. An unknown saucer attacks the Typhoon.
2. Noises in the Night	Back on Mars, Scott briefs them further. Street thugs attack Jack and Joe. General Douglas encounters Martians in his hotel room.
3. Murder!	The Commers investigate Douglas’ murder. The nature of the Martian shattergun. Sam and an alien try to wreck the Armstrong Center.
4. The Search	The Typhoon I and Typhoon II crews accompany Major John West to the Kilpatrick Desert, where they decode Martian drawings warning of an attack from Mercury.
7. The Stowaway	Jack, Joe, and Jim discuss the family problem, John. A Martian stowaway is discovered. Jack cuts off Jim’s shattergunned finger, and the stowaway commits suicide.
15. Stalemate in Space	Jack, Joe and Amav confront the Commer parents as family problems and USSF secrets are broadcast over AresNet.

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Contents

1. Survey
2. Noises in the Night
3. Murder!
4. The Search
5. Attacked!
6. Mission Briefing
7. The Stowaway
8. The Typhoon I
9. Marooned
10. Captured!
11. Strange Mental Vibrations
12. Flight Hanger A
13. Confrontation
14. The Spacewalk
15. Stalemate in Space
16. Conference
17. The Typhoon II
18. In the Boudoir
19. Return to Earth

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