About Thomas Kent Miller and Why I Wrote This Book

Thomas Kent Miller in London.

I’m Thomas Kent Miller, author of Mars in the Movies: A History from McFarland and Company publishers, and a number of other books and essays. From the age of eight I read science fiction and watched science fiction films, particularly Mars movies like The War of the Worlds (1953), Invaders from Mars (1953), and Conquest of Space (1955). 

Also see my long illustrated essay about exactly how I wrote and crafted Mars In the Movies, the book.

However, more importantly, I developed a lifelong fascination for the planet Mars, believing that it was important that people go there, as it seemed like an exciting place to explore. Mars became for me a sort of Holy Grail where I felt urgently that we, that is humans, must visit and explore. Of course there are any number of other more practical reasons to support such a program, but at heart I was mainly excited by the prospect of seeing and experiencing (vicariously to be sure) the sights the planet had to offer. Once my family moved from northern California to southern California in 1985 for unrelated reasons, I knew that by hook or by crook, sooner or later, I would be employed by  JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (La Canada Flintridge/Pasadena), probably the most visible NASA center both then and now. 

Well in February 1988 I in fact first sat down at my desk in the Documentation Section of JPL and began writing and editing a wide assortment of journal papers and presentations for the 3,000+ scientists and engineers who are the reason the lab exists. (Another 2,000 or so people supported them, from chefs to shuttle drivers to people like me). 

The reality is that the only Mars-related program I was involved with was Mars Observer…which simply “vanished,” that’s is, communications were lost irretrievably, as it approached the planet in 1993. Tough luck.  Of course, I was deeply disappointed, but the lab bounced and has had several stunningly successful Mars missions in subsequent years.

I very much enjoyed my seven years at JPL. In some ways: I felt liked I’d died and gone to heaven; I felt like I was going to work in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland realm each and every day for all that time; I never  tired of the atmosphere and ambiance and the thrill of discovery that was fundamental to JPL. I felt like I was getting the high school education that my real high school experience lacked. The downside was that the lab was 70 miles from my home and the commute eventually grew old. Another concern was southern California earthquakes. In 1992 the Landers quake was the worst in 40 years; in 1994, the Northridge quake was historically devastating. My son was in preschool at the time and I had great fears of what would happen if my wife was out of town and then a quake clogged the freeways worse than the beginning of the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday.

But then I was offered a dream job as editor-in-chief of the flagship technical trade magazine of an important computer software company, which also was much nearer my home, and I jumped at the chance, and eventually over twenty years grew the magazine's quarterly distribution from 75,000 to one million.  

But all along, though, I mourned the fact that my full-time job (requiring innumerable extra hours, which was always the case in my profession) prevented me from writing the book about Mars movies that I always daydreamed about. 

But eventually I retired and the first thing I did was write that book. In short, my lifelong fascination with Mars and Mars movies culminated in 2016 with the publication of the book Mars in the Movies: A History, which is the first cinematic reference book focused entirely on Mars movies, 100 films from 1910 to 2016, published by McFarland & Company.

I am thrilled that National Public Radio (NPR) KPCC 83.9 interviewed me on air about the book, You can hear the whole interview here: https://marsinthemoviesahistory.blogspot.com/2017/04/kpcc-839-airtalks-friday-filmweek-npr.html

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.