Jesus On Mars by Philip José Farmer (book review).

Philip José Farmer’s ‘Jesus On Mars’ was originally published by Pinnacle Books in the USA in 1979 in paperback. A UK paperback followed from Panther/Granada in 1982. It was collected along with ‘Fire And The Night’ and ‘Night Of Light’, in a hardcover omnibus titled ‘The Other In The Mirror’ from Subterranean Press in 2009, but good luck finding that one now!

Meteor House have brought us the first hardcover edition of ‘Jesus On Mars’, alongside a new paperback version.

This edition starts off with a publisher’s note, ‘For What You Are About To Read’, in which they note the small alterations made to the text of this new edition, taking into account the changing of sensibilities over the decades. I wouldn’t have bothered to mention this, except that it’s become something of a sticky subject of late, what with the works of Roald Dahl and others being subjected to a silly level of censorship that has had some people up in arms. This is not the case here. The publishers were close personal friends with Farmer and the very small changes made in no way materially change what Farmer originally wrote. In fact they’ve left a section of the book intact in which the characters express views on homosexuality that would not be considered acceptable today. They state that Farmer was an exceptionally forward-thinking person and that they suspect this section of the book was intended by Farmer to prompt thought and have readers question their own opinions. The late Frank Zappa often did much the same in his lyrics.

Personally, I would have left the original text intact, but I absolutely trust Meteor House to have handled things with every care and not make any changes of which Farmer would have disapproved.

The introduction, by psychologist and long-time Farmer friend, Tracy Knight, ruminates on themes close to Farmer’s psyche, religion, immortality and the quest for unknowable answers and is fascinating enough that I read it three times. He points out that those who might consider ‘Jesus On Mars’ to be somehow unusual in its focus on religion would be quite wrong, as Farmer scrutinises religion in most, if not all, of his major works. It’s a fundamental part of the human condition and cannot be ignored.

Farmer’s preface to the shorter version of ‘Jesus On Mars’ tells us how the novel version was sent to ‘Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’, to see if they wanted to serialise it before the novel was published. Editor George Scithers elected to go with an abridgement instead but, through a massive lack of communication between agent and publisher, the novel was published before it could appear and thus it was dropped. This abridgement, along with a battle scene excised from ‘The Magic Labyrinth’, was published in ‘Riverworld War: The Suppressed Fiction Of Philip José Farmer’ (The Ellis Press, 1980). One would be pushed to source a copy of that small booklet (109 pages) for under three figures these days. In light of the original intentions, it was decided to print the abridged teaser before the main novel in this collection.

In the Abridgement, an artificial construct has been discovered on the surface of Mars and a crew of three are sent to investigate what turns out to be the remains of an ancient spaceship. They find more than they bargained for when they are taken captive by the descendants of the crew of the spaceship, some of whom are human!

They soon learn that the spaceship belonged to a race, the Krsh, that visited Earth in the past and took some humans away to study. It’s much, much more complicated than that, of course, even in this drastically shortened version. I don’t want to spoil the story, but the title rather gives away the fact that this settlement included a man who claims to be Jesus Christ. The Krsh and their human friends intend to bring the message of Christ to Earth in something that sounds rather like an invasion. Had I read this as a novelette, not knowing it was an abridgement, I might have commented that it would really benefit from fleshing out into a longer work.

The first thing that struck me when I read the abridged version was that it immediately brought to mind a classic joke opening line. Farmer doesn’t actually put it in these words (in fact, the religious background of the three astronauts isn’t openly stated that early on, albeit it was pretty easy to guess from their names) but the jist of it is, ‘A Christian, a Moslem and a Jew go to Mars.’ I felt fairly sure at this point that Farmer was intentionally riffing on the seemingly endless number of variations on the old joke that I first heard as, ‘An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman walk into a bar.’ It’s just the sort of nod to popular culture that I’d expect from Farmer.

The first major difference I noticed on starting the full-length version was that there was a fourth crew member, a woman. I think I’ve heard variants on the old joke that introduced a Welshman into the mix, so, ‘A Christian, a Moslem, a Jew and an atheist go to Mars’, still works.

On finally meeting Jesus in the flesh, the main protagonist, Richard Orme, an African-American Baptist Christian, and his compatriots all go through several stages of disbelief, acceptance and back again before the book is over. This is exacerbated by the rather clever idea Farmer had of having Jesus himself offer Orme a very plausible, at least in a Science Fiction story, alternative explanation of what he might actually be, if he wasn’t the real Jesus.

I mentioned before the section that contains a discussion of homosexuality. The crew learn that the Martians (both human and Krsh) have all but eradicated homosexuality in men and women by means of genetic tweaking. One of the crew members is appalled by this. I sympathise with her opinion and I would hope that most of the people reading this review are generally supportive of the rights of gays and lesbians but some, while being against the bigotry and mistreatment homosexuals regularly encounter in human society might still regard their sexuality as a birth defect and support any means that might ‘cure’ it prior to birth.

This is just one of many ways in which this book is designed to make you, whether you be Christian, atheist or of any other faith, question your beliefs. This is demonstrated in the dedication Farmer wrote in Tracy Knight’s copy of the original paperback edition, where he jokingly states that he’s also the author of ‘Joseph Smith On Mercury’ and ‘Buddha On Venus’. Does ‘Jesus On Mars’ answer all of your questions… absolutely not! The point of the book is to encourage the reader to ponder those questions for themselves and it succeeds in this aim remarkably well.

I almost forgot to mention the beautiful artwork in this new edition. The abridgement includes the original illustrations by Frank M. Borth III that would have appeared alongside it in ‘Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’, had it been included as originally planned. The two gorgeous covers (one for the hardcover, and one for the paperback) title page & frontispiece are by Keith Howell.

Highly recommended!

Dave Brzeski

June 2023

Jesus On Mars by Philip José Farmer 

(pub: Meteor House, 2023. 320 page hardback limited edition. Price: $60.00 (US). Enlarged paperback: $25.00 (US))

check out website: https://meteorhousepress.com/jesus-on-mars/