''Beige Planet Mars'' is a 1998 novel by

Lance Parkin Lance Parkin is a British author. He is best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular ''Doctor Who'' (and spin-offs including the Virgin New Adventures and Faction Paradox) and as a storyliner on ''Emmerda ...

and

Mark Clapham Mark Clapham (born 1976) is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular relating to ''Doctor Who'' (and its spin-offs) and Warhammer 40,000. Writing Clapham started out writing ''Doc ...

featuring the fictional archaeologist

Bernice Summerfield Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield, or simply Benny, is a fictional character created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length ''Doctor Who'' novels, the '' New Ad ...

. The New Adventures were a spin-off from the long-running British

science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...

series ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...

''. The cover features a

Martian canal During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observe ...

, a reference to a popular trope in science fiction stories and art about Mars.

Writing

Mark Clapham explained, "Lance arkinasked me o co-write it He wanted to write for the Benny range, but didn't want to write a whole one. I had this murder plot I wanted to do, and he wanted to write a book about Mars."

Plot

The novel is set on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

and draws on previous depictions of the planet in the New Adventures.

References

External links

* {{K9 stories, selected=Books 1998 British novels 1998 science fiction novels Virgin New Adventures Novels by Lance Parkin Novels by Mark Clapham Novels set on Mars