My favourite Martian

Some are friendly and funny. Others are hatching nefarious plans. Essentially, they’re not that different from Earthlings. Writers of fantasy and speculative fiction pick their favourite Martians from the worlds of fiction and sci-fi.

Prayaag Akbar

author of Leila (2017), which was turned into a Netflix series in 2019. Set in a dystopian near-future, the book follows one woman’s attempt to find her missing daughter in an India run by a totalitarian regime

My favourite Martian at this moment lives in a wonderful, warm story called The Way Back Home (2007), by Oliver Jeffers. It’s the story of a young boy who discovers a plane in his closet and soars into the sky, only to crash-land on the moon. He finds a Martian who has suffered a similar fate. The boy and the Martian must find their way back home. My twoand-a-half-year-old son and I love this story. It is a reminder that the way to get through a crisis is by helping others, even those different from us.

Mimi Mondal

Hugo- and Nebula award-nominated author. Her Nebula-nominated novelette titled His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light (2019), involves a genie, a vengeful temple goddess, a trapeze master and a young devadasi

Two of my favourite Martians are Bobbie Draper and Alex Kamal from the TV show The Expanse (2015--). I really enjoyed the broad tapestry of scientifically believable, culturally intelligent storytelling on this show. I squealed at my TV when I noticed there was a neighbourhood called Breach Candy on Mars, which may have been the contribution of the showrunner Naren

Shankar.

Anil Menon

author of Half Of What I Say (2015). His debut novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (2009) is set in Pune 2040, a world of emotional cars, liquid computers, illusion pods, and two teenage siblings who are questioning what it means to be human

Actually, there’s nothing truly “alien” about aliens in science-fiction. The movie Mission to Mars (2000) plays with this idea. In the movie, it turns out that tech-advanced Martians had seeded life on Earth long ago. In short, the Martians are us! I really liked the idea. Humans are such misfits on this planet. It’s like we belong elsewhere.

Manjula Padmanabhan

author of Escape (2008). Its protagonist, Meiji, is the only woman left in a land where women have been exterminated. In the sequel, The Island of Lost Girls (2015), Meiji heads out of her brutalised homeland

There was an American TV programme called My Favorite Martian (1963). It was a sweet show about a mildly bad-tempered being who looked human but had some special powers. I was 12 years old and was already fixated on space travel and SF. I knew of course that humanoids from that planet were unlikely, but I liked the character’s personality.