Posthuman Blues

I just viewed the first draft of the cover for my new book, "After the Martian Apocalypse." It's bold. It's dramatic. I like it.

The only thing I would change is the unprocessed Viking image of the Face. Not only is this the image that publications such as Weekly World News invariably choose to use when addressing the Face, it's also the version most adored by would-be debunkers who claim it's all a trick of light and shadow. They also enjoy claiming --falsely -- that Face "believers" think that one of the black dots (due to data transmission error) is a "nostril." Even Carl Sagan, who should have known better, regurgitated this claim in "The Demon-Haunted World."

The irony is that there actually is a structure resembling an anatomically correct nostril on the Face, but of course not visible at Viking resolution. Debunkers wisely choose not to confront the implications of the relatively minute humanoid features uncovered by new observations.