and his realistic description of extraterrestrial scenes and life-forms were better than anything yet seen, and the science fiction reading public went mad over him." The story "had the effect on the field of an exploding grenade. With this single story, Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world's best living science fiction writer, and at once almost every writer in the field tried to imitate him." Before, aliens had been nothing more than plot devices to help or hinder the hero. Weinbaum's creations, like the pyramid-builder and the cart creatures, have their own reasons for existing. Also, their logic is not human logic, and humans cannot always puzzle out their motivations. Tweel itself was one of the first characters (arguably the first) who satisfied John W. Campbell's challenge: "Write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man." According to Bud Webster, the creatures in "A Martian Odyssey" were the first aliens in science fiction that were truly alien, in contrast to previous depictions of Martians as monsters or basically human. In 1970, when the Science Fiction Writers of America voted on the best science fiction short stories before the creation of the Nebula Awards, "A Martian Odyssey" came in second to Asimov's "Nightfall", and was the earliest story to make the list. The chosen stories were published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964. Larry Niven included several references to "A Martian Odyssey" in his Rainbow Mars. In 2002, the Peter Crowther-edited anthology Mars Probes included "A Martian Theodicy" by Paul Di Filippo, a "thoroughly disrespectful" sequel. Reception In 2004, Strange Horizons stated that the story has "dated badly", with a "thin" plot, but that it is "partly redeemed by sheer invention." In 2017, Tor.com called it "fascinating, brimming with humor", and judged Tweel as "at once likeable and incomprehensible." Collections "A Martian Odyssey" appears in the following Stanley G. Weinbaum collections: The Dawn of Flame (1936) A Martian Odyssey and Others (1949) A Martian Odyssey and Other Classics of Science Fiction (1962) A Martian Odyssey and Other Great Science Fiction Stories (1966) A Martian Odyssey and Other Science Fiction Tales (1974) The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum (1974) Interplanetary Odysseys (2006) A Martian Odyssey: Stanley G. Weinbaum's Worlds of If (2008) Adaptations "A Martian Odyssey" appears as a 26-page comic book adaptation by Ben