“The Martian in the Wood” by Stephen Baxter

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Story can be read on-line: https://www.tor.com/2017/08/02/the-martian-in-the-wood/

Rating: 4/5 Stars

An interesting story set in the period after the ending of the (first) war between Earth and Mars. A sister returns to her home after the war, only to find her brother behaving strangely and constantly going to a nearby wood. She learns that earlier, one of the unaccounted for Martian war machines had been seen crashing into the woods, possibly felled by a lightning storm.

When she attempts to enter the wood to find her brother, she finds herself in a strange world, almost like Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood where the inside is bigger than the outside and appears to be not from our own time. She calls upon the help of the Narrator who documented the first Martian war (which is H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds) and together they explore the wood and discover who inhabits it, the mysterious force it uses and how it has a hold over the brother.

Initially sounding fantastical in the beginning, the story uses elements from Wells’ earlier story effectively and is a good introduction to Baxter’s own sequel to Wells’ book, The Massacre of Mankind.

Story read from 2017/09/19 to 2017/10/01