Old Mars

Matthew Hughes was born in Liverpool, England, but has spent most of his adult life in Canada. He worked as a journalist, as a staff speechwriter for the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia before settling down to write fiction full-time. Clearly strongly influenced by Jack Vance, as an author Hughes has made his reputation detailing the adventures of rogues like Old Earth’s master criminal Luff Imbry, who lives in the era just before that of The Dying Earth, in a series of novels and novellas that include Fools Errant, Fool Me Twice, Black Brillion, Majestrum, Hespira, The Spiral Labyrinth, Template, Quartet and Triptych, The Yellow Cabochon, The Other, and The Commons, and short-story collections The Gist Hunter and Other Stories, 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, and The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories. His most recent books are the novels in his urban fantasy trilogy, To Hell and Back: The Damned Busters, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay. He also writes crime fiction as Matt Hughes and media tie-in novels as Hugh Matthews.

In the autumnal story that follows, he shows us that everyone sees the Mars that they want to see—and perhaps gets the Mars that they deserve.