Feature

Perhaps it’s the high-desert altitude and horizon-to-horizon skyline that allow for unadulterated, year-round stargazing. Perhaps it’s the dense backdrop of scientific history that runs from Los Alamos in the north down through Sandia National Labs and off south into the Trinitite-littered ground of the first atomic bomb test at White Sands Missile Range. Maybe (just maybe) it has something to do with that infamous, oft-debated crash site outside of Roswell. Could that wayward extraterrestrial hit-and-run have left some inspirational layer of irradiated stardust buried in the hardened caliche of the New Mexico soil?

Whatever the reason, New Mexico is home to a surprising number of top-rank science fiction writers. Legends of the business like Fred Saberhagen, Jack Williamson and Roger Zelazny have all proudly made our state their permanent starbase. Others have merely breezed through. Fredric Brown, the Edgar Award-winning author of Martians, Go Home and What Mad Universe, spent a few years kicking around Taos back in the ’50s. Nowadays, New Mexico hosts a virtual fleet of writers whose styles range from hard science fiction to pure epic fantasy. What are they doing here? What draws them to the Land of Enchantment? Are they merely the spearhead to some impending alien invasion? We sent out our crack team of Alibi investigators to find out.