Mars | Book Girl & Little Bear

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

The Martian Contingency: A Lady Astronaut Novel by Mary Robinette Kowal

Elma York, 48, is the deputy administrator on Bradbury Base on Mars. The year is 1970, but this is an alternate timeline. In Kowal’s award-winning Lady Astronaut series, the race to space was accelerated after a meteor strike in 1952 triggered global warming as well as causing many, many deaths. Technology developed for space is also helping conditions on Earth. Racism and discrimination against women are evident here, but they are being dealt with much sooner than on our version of Earth. Elma and her husband Nathaniel, an engineer, are part of the 2^nd expedition to Mars, and they will not be returning to Earth. Elma really enjoys math, piloting, and baking, especially when she’s anxious. Nathaniel is a workaholic and they are both Jewish. On the base the habitat observes Jewish, Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, and Christian holidays. The calendar is a focus here as days on Mars are 39 minutes longer and the year is twice as long as on Earth, and there is a time lag for communications. While technology is more advanced than our Earth was in 1970 (or in 2025), in others not so much, such as for healthcare. Secrets from the first expedition are gradually uncovered, and there are complications in preparing for the next expedition, which will include teens as well as adults. This is the fourth book, after The Relentless Moon. Calculating Stars is the first book, and they are all excellent, compelling reads. I am enjoying the combination of science fiction and alternate history, as well as the memorable characters. I read a digital review copy; the novel will be published March 18.

Brenda