Publisher: Del Rey Books
Copyright: 1956
ISBN: 0345298586
This book is quite dark in its portrayal of life on Mars, which is essentially an outlaw territory where citizens of Earth who are no longer welcome are sent. This plot detail obviously parallels the British use of Australia as a penal colony.
The protagonist Bruce Gordon is an ex-boxer, ex-gambler, ex-cop, and ex-reporter who is shipped off Earth for Mars with a one-way ticket, his alternative punishment being the mines on Mercury. Gangs run various parts of the city, graft is ever present, the police are corrupt, as are the politicians, and pretty much everybody else. While I can't be totally sure (as I was never exiled to Australia, not have I visited Mars), I think that the descriptions of how people would live in a penal colony are likely fairly accurate.
Being that this book was written in 1956, the science is fairly incorrect based on what we now know of the solar system. The story itself is also quite confusing in a number of places, as there are a fair number of characters, and unfortunately for the most part they are very one dimensional. I have read very few of Mr. Del Rey's books, so I'm not overly sure how his other works stack up to this one, but he is a very famous author, so I will see what else I can read of his.
