martian-messages

[martian-messages]

Today's the big day!

Happy Mark Rescue day! Today's entry is the longest to be posted, taking up 19 pages in Google Docs (twelve point Times New Roman) and consisting of a whopping 6.7k words! Second place is Sol 6, with 5.1k words over 11 pages.

If you're still here, thanks for sticking around for the past year and a half! The epilogue will be up next week, and then we'll have a break until Martian Messages starts up again in November. I'm proud of what this project has become, and I'm excited for it to continue in the fall.

Once again, thank y'all for everything. Martian messages is such a labor of love and it wouldn't be the same without all of you supporting it. I hope you enjoy today's entry!

[martian-messages]

Hey guys! Just a heads up that the next post is on April 28th, so expect a short hiatus!

[martian-messages]

Today's post is on a two-hour delay because of yesterday's mixup!

Stay tuned for April 4 in half an hour!

[martian-messages]

Hi I just wanted to let you know about the short story "Diary of an Ass Can". It's too late to add it to the blog as it takes place before the mission but it's still a fun little read. There are also more short stories in an appendix called "From the Files of Mark Watney" but they seem to be really hard to locate or access.

hello, and thanks for the ask! Diary of an Ass Can is really cute (and also heartbreaking) thanks for putting it on my radar! it won't fit chronologically, but I think I might include it sometime during the summer hiatus between two Martian Messages runs. it's a great idea!

I'm also making inroads on Files, but I haven't heard back yet from my source. thanks for letting me know about these stories, because I never would have heard of them otherwise!

[martian-messages]

Well, crap.

for you enterprising followers who are keeping tabs on things, you might have noticed that I've missed a few entries. all I can say is that March lasted about as long as the Iris probe did, which is to say two seconds.

I'm going to march the previous three entries by the hour. April 1st will be up at 2pm CST, April 2nd at 3pm, and today's entry at 4. tomorrow (if I remember, lol), I'm going to backtrace the post dates to line up correctly. this will make things easier on me in the long run.

frankly? I'm honestly surprised this hasn't happened before. good on me, I guess. the good news is that 1) I'm only 3 days late instead of like. a month, and 2) it will quite literally never happen again. by the end of today I will have all posts queued up through the end of the book! also as of yesterday, we have made it through 500 sols (out of a possible 549). less than 50 sols to go! we're approximately 9% from the finish line.

once again, thank you all for your patience. I'm so excited to see this through to the end, and I hope you all enjoy it with me. the April 1 entry will be up in *checks watch* 7 minutes, so stay tuned!

[martian-messages]

We are now into The Lost Sols!

If you haven't read them yet, you're in for a treat -- The Lost Sols is a short series of entries that were released for the tenth anniversary of The Martian's publication. After that, we'll be back to our (not-so) regularly scheduled programming!

As for the couple of asks sitting in my inbox -- don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you! I love the idea of a community and I'll definitely put some thought into it later. Concerning the other short stories -- great idea, I'm still looking into it, as I haven't had much bandwidth for that kind of research. As soon as I have time, I'll respond to your asks with more concrete answers!

I have one more mass posting run to make that will get through May, and that's the end of the 2023-25 season! I'll have more info at the end of May, but expect your subscriptions to be rolled over to Wordpress before we start up again in November. With this migration I'm hoping to start also posting MM entries to this Tumblr account -- so expect a few test runs before we get underway.

As always, thank you so, so much for following Martian Messages! This has been a really cool project to work on and I'm excited to continue this fall. I hope you're all enjoying Mark's final journey, and I'm excited to being him home together.

Alright, I've talked long enough. Have a wonderful day and I'll see you on Mars!

[martian-messages]

woohoo!! we're back!!!!

this ask is like. two months old. and I apologize 😭😭😭 but yeah Mark is posting again!!! and also apparently I missed the two year anniversary of this blog's creation which is crazy. two years??? insane.

anyway I have all of the entries through March scheduled, so just one more batch before it's over!!! I cannot believe how far we've come and I'm so excited to see this through.

I definitely plan to start up again this November, maybe on WordPress? failing that, probably Patreon. I also want to experiment with posting directly here.

thank y'all for being so patient with me during the whole process!!! I know I've definitely been kind of awful at answering messages, and there have been a few mistakes here and there, but y'all have been so amazing and I love getting to see your excitement. thank you so much!!!

[martian-messages]

The next post is on January 21st! See you then <3

[martian-messages]

Martian Messages update today!

Mark is back and ready to rock. Check your emails for a new update on his stay on Mars!

[martian-messages]

T-Minus Two Weeks!

Friendly reminder that Martian Messages resumes November 26! If you want to catch up on logs you missed or reread recent entries, now is a great time to hit up the archive on Substack!

[martian-messages]

Thanks to our friends at USGS Astrogeology for creating these, and Happy Martian New Year!

[martian-messages]

Oops! Slight glitch with Tumblr, the last post was supposed to say November 26th instead of January 21st.

Martian Messages will return on the 26th of November.

We hope to see you all at the end of the hiatus!

[martian-messages]

the martian daily brings me so much joy, thank you for setting it up! it's so lovely to read one of my favorite books in a new way. it really makes me imagine im like part of the universe of the Martian, looking at the NASA updates to read the new news about Watney every time they make a press release.

Aw, thanks for reading! I've gotten multiple asks like this and they always make me smile (even though I'm really slow to answer 😅). That was sort of the goal of this project: to give the impression of real news releases from NASA on Watney's condition. I'm glad they're having the desired effect! I hope you've enjoyed the book so far and we'll see you in November!

[martian-messages]

The Martian messages email list is supposed to go into 2025 I think. Do you know if you’ll be doing it more than once? Like have it start again in November of 2025 or is it just a one time thing? I know it’s probably a lot of work to run something like this so no worries if it’s a one off but I love getting stuff like this and Dracula daily in my inbox 💜💜

Thanks for the ask! I think I've mentioned it before in passing, but I'll make it clear here: I am definitely planning on continuing Martian Messages in 2025! I'm not sure what that will look like yet, because I don't really want to keep using Substack, but I'm currently looking into alternatives and so far the show is still on. Most of the hard work is over, so restarting isn't actually too much of an effort (just a little bit tedious).

The impression I'm getting is that people would prefer an email list, so I'm looking into making that happen using other newsletter programs. If nothing else, I'll migrate to this blog instead, but that's a sort of "last resort" plan. I'd certainly welcome any ideas!

[martian-messages]

⟦ Announcing Frankenstein Fridays! ⟧

Hello and welcome to Frankenstein Fridays !!!!

Frankenstein Fridays is a weekly Substack mailing list, set on delivering one chapter* of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) to your inbox every Friday!

Basically: you know Dracula Daily? This is kind of like that, except with Frankenstein. It would be in the daily style of DD, except Frankenstein spans multiple years, not months.

Mailing will begin on Friday September 6th and end on Friday March 7th (if all goes according to plan). You can sign up any time, though.

[ subscribe here | FAQ here | ask a question ]

Also, if you are so kind as to want to design a logo for FF, feel free to submit it in an ask!! ❤️❤️

(* or sections of one chapter, depending on length. The first section, for example, is Letters I, II, & III.)

CREDIT: inspired by dracula daily & @martian-messages 🔗 ; final push inspo made by @spooky-something ; saw divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more ; heart divider by @astralnymphh

run by @nota1eks

[martian-messages]

An Announcement :(

Okay, here’s the (not so) fun part. For the next five-ish months, we’re not gonna hear from Watney and friends. I know, it’s sad. I’ll miss them too. Posts will pick back up on November 26 (more than a year after we started, can you believe it?) In the meantime… keep talking about Mars! I’m gonna try to watch the movie at least once, but if you don’t want to spoil the ending, you might want to avoid that. I know some people don’t like reading multiple books at once, but Andy Weir has a couple of other space-related books that you could check out while you’re waiting, and there’s an adorable middle-grade book called A Rover’s Story that I can’t even begin to recommend enough. But above all, I hope you stick with us to the end. Watney’s counting on you (not really. But I am. I’ll be sad if you unsubscribe. Not surprised, but sad. Sorry.)

Okay, I’m rambling. Sorry. I hope you’ve enjoyed so far, enough to stick with us. If you’re looking for more content about The Martian, I'm a lot more active on my blog @liopleurodean, but I'll try to interact more here as well. There’s a whole community of Martian fans (including the incredible @man-on-mars) and we’d love to talk about it! With luck (and duct tape), I’ll see you on the flip side!

[martian-messages]

Did I hallucinate you having a Dracula Daily-esque thing for Mark Watney?? I feel like I remember that but I can’t seem to find anything about it.

//You're thinking of @martian-messages !! That's not run by me. Tumblr's own @liopleurodean runs the substack, I made the icon art. Definitely a real thing, you didn't hallucinate it.