"Police Your Planet" Lester Del Rey (1915-1993)

 

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.

"How We'll Live on Mars" by Stephen L. Petranek

 

Publisher: TED Books
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781476784762

This book is extremely informative and provided the source material for the docu-drama "Mars" which gives a fictional review of what might be encountered by astronauts going to the Red planet, interspersed with an examination of the current rather sad state of the space program.

Mr. Petranek begins with a basic overview of the space program from its impetus to approximately the 1980s. He deals a fair bit of time with Werner von Braun’s proposal “Das Marsprojekt” for missions to Mars that he began promoting in 1948 (I’ll be looking for a copy of this book as it sounds fascinating). After this he goes on to outline a very logical and in my opinion workable method of how we might actually make it there, and  why we should go.

A portion of the main narrative revolves around the work of Elon Musk and his Space Exploration Corporation aka SpaceX, but Mr. Petranek also looks into the various big questions such as will a small group of people be able to get along with each other, is anybody willing to pay for the project, the safety of the project, effects of prolonged exposure to micro-gravity, medical issues that might come about, and lastly the radiation the astronauts will be exposed to.

He then goes on to look at the economics of the project, the factors that will have to be taken into account if astronauts actually want to live on Mars, terra-forming, and other topics.

The only thing in this book that I found detracted from the overall plan is that it was written in 2015, and in the 6 years since then a number of major advances have been made, so it is hoped that the author will consider writing an updated second edition.

"Red Planet" by Robert A. Heinlein (1908-1988)

Publisher: Ballentine Del Rey Books
Copyright:1949
ISBN: 0345260694

Red planet is the third in what are known as the "Heinlein Juveniles", and was written in 1949. It takes place after Space Cadet, but there is no actual year specified in the text. The story revolves around colonists on Mars, who because they live relatively near the polar regions are required to migrate from one pole to another on a yearly basis.

The protagonist in the story is one James Marlowe, a teenager who along with a friend (Frank) are being sent away to a boarding school which is located nearer to the equator. Their time at the boarding school, is fine until the headmaster retires and is replaced by someone who plan to run the school like a military academy.

The science of Red Planet, is consistent with what was known of the planet in the late 1940s. It draws a lot on the speculations of Dr. Percival Lowell (1855-1916), and though now we know that the vast majority of his hypotheses were incorrect, it still makes for a good story. Some of these ideas he put forth were things such as Mars being covered with a network of canals carrying water, and large areas of vegetation, etc.

Jim's adventures include meeting and interacting with the native population of Martians. The Martians in this book are not the same as the ones described in "Double Star" which was written in 1956, and which I reviewed a while back. These Martians are much more consistent with the ones that will be learned about in Heinlein famous novel "Stranger in a Strange Land". When looking at the events as described in this novel, Stranger in a Strange Land must take place a fairly long time prior to Red Planet.