climate change | Book Girl & Little Bear

North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska by Ben Weissenbach

Young journalist Ben Weissenbach, when not scrolling on his phone, is fascinated by Alaska. At 20, he spent the summer of 2019 with climate scientist and adventurer Roman Dial trekking across the eastern Brooks Range. During another trip to Alaska he experienced an Arctic winter fortnight on Kenji Yohikawa’s off-grid cabin near Fairbanks, tending to his reindeer. Ben also flew over part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with glaciologist Matt Nolan, occasionally dealing with smoke-filled skies.

The longest section of the book is about a hiking and pack rafting expedition in the Western Brooks Range in 2021, led by Roman Dial, studying the spread of spruce trees in the Arctic. Many adventures and misadventures are described, including encounters with wolves and grizzly bears, along with his struggle as to simply be present in the amazing expanse of Alaska. I very much enjoy the combination of real-life adventure, travel, science, and memoir, and look forward to reading what he’s up to next.

Brenda

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

January Stirling is a principal dancer for London’s Royal Ballet until severe flooding has him looking for refuge. When offered a chance to immigrate to the Tharsis colony on Mars, he gratefully accepts. But once on Mars, his employment options are limited to heavy labor, as he is Earthstrong, and must wear a device to keep him from injuring the tall, slender, and frail naturalized citizens, except in his small apartment or while working in a factory. Unwilling to go through a risky naturalization procedure, January is stunned when Senator Aubrey Gale offers him a very unusual job.

While January is male, citizens on Mars, incubated in a uterine replicator, don’t label themselves with a gender. Religion is also not practiced on Mars, though many immigrants celebrate their traditional holidays. Gale is running for Consul, head of the Senate, and needs January to help their image. An unusual dust storm leads to a power shortage and the need to either build a new solar array, with the workers wearing heat suits, or to accept help from China in building a nuclear reactor.

Gale loves linguistics and their aides warn January that Gale will speak on the topic at great length. On Mars, a variant of Mandarin Chinese is spoken, along with some Russian and English. In my favorite part of the book, Gale shares that with technology, they can communicate with a herd of mammoths, who are enormously tall in the low Martian gravity.

The house in the title is huge, and has an indoor bonsai garden, a koi pond, some very high ceilings, and in places a glass floor. January often sees a person who may be a ghost, but who is never mentioned by anyone else. January finds Gale fascinating, even as their views on naturalization are very different, and January is still suffering a bit of culture shock.

Pulley is known for her Watchmaker novels, beginning with The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which I remember as having elements of steampunk fantasy and time travel. I found that trilogy highly unusual, but excellent. Mars House is wondrous, charming, and unlike any other Mars books I have read.

Brenda