:00:00. > :00:00.Now it is time to speak to Steven Baxter, who has taken on the huge
:00:07. > :00:13.task of taking on a sequel to HG Wells' War of the Worlds.
:00:14. > :00:17.You have to be brave to write a sequel to a novel by HG Wells,
:00:18. > :00:20.But Stephen Baxter has done it for the second time.
:00:21. > :00:23.Having taken on the story of the Time Machine more than
:00:24. > :00:25.20 years ago, he has now written The Massacre of Mankind,
:00:26. > :00:28.which is the story of the return of the Martians
:00:29. > :00:30.after their defeat in Wells's classic story,
:00:31. > :00:33.Stephen Baxter, maths and physics teacher turned author is one
:00:34. > :00:36.of our best-known science-fiction authors with more than 40 books to
:00:37. > :00:38.his name has also collaborated with Arthur C Clarke, no less,
:00:39. > :00:41.Now he takes on one of his biggest challenges.
:00:42. > :01:03.Well, they always intended to, I think.
:01:04. > :01:06.The first expedition, as we know, failed.
:01:07. > :01:09.There is so much they didn't anticipate - the bacteria on the
:01:10. > :01:19.They didn't anticipate resistance, I don't believe.
:01:20. > :01:22.We did manage to down a few artillery shells and so forth.
:01:23. > :01:24.Didn't really expect the conditions of the Earth.
:01:25. > :01:27.Wells says they were baffled by seeing ships in the sea,
:01:28. > :01:35.I think the first expedition was like Columbus.
:01:36. > :01:39.He gets over the Atlantic and has no idea where he is or what he is
:01:40. > :01:42.What followed that is the conquistadors, more purposeful
:01:43. > :01:45.and they know what they want and how to get it as well.
:01:46. > :01:48.So it is a story not just of fear on Earth, the sense
:01:49. > :01:52.of impending doom, it is the story of mutual incomprehension.
:01:53. > :02:02.Rather like the story of the Americas, I guess.
:02:03. > :02:04.But the Martians are on a kind of different
:02:05. > :02:09.They treat us as livestock, basically.
:02:10. > :02:11.Awkward livestock that is liable to attack
:02:12. > :02:13.you if you're not careful but livestock.
:02:14. > :02:16.As with animals, they are loyal to each other, they come back
:02:17. > :02:20.to each other and save each other when they are wounded and so forth
:02:21. > :02:23.and what they are trying to do is save the race from a catastrophe
:02:24. > :02:28.You talk in terms of Wells in terms of enormous respect,
:02:29. > :02:31.obviously, but a kind of affection for his vision.
:02:32. > :02:39.Well, he was the father of science fiction, I think
:02:40. > :02:45.If he had done nothing else that would have been massively
:02:46. > :02:50.But he did all sorts of other things.
:02:51. > :02:53.He was a big figure in the world and I
:02:54. > :02:55.think after his death we've rather forgotten that.
:02:56. > :02:58.He was a massive public figure all the way through to
:02:59. > :03:03.Very popular in the First World War, accounts of
:03:04. > :03:05.the true condition of life in the trenches and so on.
:03:06. > :03:09.And I think his life's work in a way was crystallised by his work
:03:10. > :03:12.on the Declaration of the Rights of Man, his work on that
:03:13. > :03:20.He was a famous idealist but in his great science-fiction books,
:03:21. > :03:23.the Time Machine, War of the Worlds, which was published just before
:03:24. > :03:24.the turn-of-the-century in the 1890s,
:03:25. > :03:27.he was doing something that really hadn't been done before.
:03:28. > :03:29.Trying to imagine the world in a way nobody
:03:30. > :03:44.There had been visions of journeys to other planets but nothing
:03:45. > :03:46.as rigorous and scientifically thought out as Wells.
:03:47. > :03:51.He used the logic of the time, which was the sun was cooling down
:03:52. > :03:54.and the further from the sun a planet was, the older it was.
:03:55. > :03:59.It is locked in an ice age and the Martians have had to reduce
:04:00. > :04:02.themselves to a kind of minimal, bunker like existence to cling
:04:03. > :04:06.That's one of the fascinating things that emerges in your own story,
:04:07. > :04:09.The Massacre of Mankind, the sympathy for, as it were,
:04:10. > :04:17.I think we, the readers, who aren't under the feet of the
:04:18. > :04:19.Martians, can see glimmers of sympathy for them.
:04:20. > :04:23.As I say, they are loyal to each other.
:04:24. > :04:25.The way you talk about the story and the
:04:26. > :04:27.Martians is interesting because you've written dozens of
:04:28. > :04:29.science-fiction stories of your own but it's almost
:04:30. > :04:31.as if you're coming back to the motherload of
:04:32. > :04:37.The fascination that we have with Mars
:04:38. > :04:38.is the archetypal fascination with the other.
:04:39. > :04:50.In the telescopic age Mars was the only world whose surface
:04:51. > :04:57.you can see apart from the moon, which was obviously dead,
:04:58. > :04:59.so you could project your fantasies on it.
:05:00. > :05:02.All the way through to the 1960s, actually, when the first space
:05:03. > :05:06.probes went past and it was much more like the moon as it turns out.
:05:07. > :05:09.Now we believe life of some kind might be up there.
:05:10. > :05:12.You talk about projecting our fantasies.
:05:13. > :05:15.Is that really what science-fiction is about?
:05:16. > :05:17.Well, I think you could say that science-fiction is about...
:05:18. > :05:19.It's not about the future or in other words
:05:20. > :05:22.it's about the here and now, predicting our concerns, in a way.
:05:23. > :05:25.So with Wells and War of the Worlds he was reflecting late Victorian
:05:26. > :05:28.angst about imperialism and colonialism and the damage it can do
:05:29. > :05:30.to the colonial conscience, for one thing.
:05:31. > :05:33.Now I think we could look at it as a metaphor for climate change.
:05:34. > :05:36.You know, the Martians' planet has collapsed in a terrible way and
:05:37. > :05:45.migrants, heavily armed migrants come to the Earth.
:05:46. > :05:47.What is it that gives this story such a grip?
:05:48. > :06:05.The fear that lurks inside all of us in some way?
:06:06. > :06:10.I think it works on many levels and as a myth you can take out of it
:06:11. > :06:13.The sense of the universe as evolving
:06:14. > :06:16.around us, not necessarily to our liking and we have to adapt.
:06:17. > :06:18.In other words, in every age there is some threat that
:06:19. > :06:23.And horrific. Yes.
:06:24. > :06:25.As I mentioned earlier, you have collaborated with some
:06:26. > :06:27.extraordinary authors and Arthur C Clarke comes to mind.
:06:28. > :06:30.A name who is known to people who are not necessarily
:06:31. > :06:32.science-fiction addicts as somebody who could imagine the unimaginable.
:06:33. > :06:35.What was he like when you communicated with him and talked to
:06:36. > :06:44.Yeah, he was in his 80s when I was working.
:06:45. > :06:49.Much of what he predicted, logically, had worked out.
:06:50. > :06:56.What I asked him about specifically was about space flight,
:06:57. > :06:59.how come we don't have places on Mars now, as predicted.
:07:00. > :07:01.He said no, because so much of what has
:07:02. > :07:08.The robot probes to Jupiter and beyond.
:07:09. > :07:11.He set novels out there late in life.
:07:12. > :07:14.So he never got tired of that curious search for the next thing
:07:15. > :07:29.He was always open to curiosity, to new influences.
:07:30. > :07:34.He read the latest SF, like mine, and stayed
:07:35. > :07:37.Let's go back finally to the Martians themselves.
:07:38. > :07:40.When we've finished this book, what do you want us to think
:07:41. > :07:43.I think the lesson we have to learn from the Martians
:07:44. > :07:46.is what the characters are working for at the end of the book
:07:47. > :07:49.and, indeed, at the end of War of the Worlds.
:07:50. > :07:51.In a way the specific nature of the Martians and their
:07:52. > :07:55.It is the way they represent the wider context of our future.
:07:56. > :08:02.That is the specific story and you have to take it away.
:08:03. > :08:04.Rather than Columbus and what he did, his journey emphasised
:08:05. > :08:12.So I think it's the universalisation of
:08:13. > :08:15.mankind of what you need to take away.
:08:16. > :08:20.I would probably be the running fast the other way.
:08:21. > :08:24.If I could watch from a height maybe, yes.
:08:25. > :08:48.Good evening. It is very quiet weather across the UK at the moment
:08:49. > :08:49.because of high pressure but that said, we've got