Fiction Reviews
Mars One
(2026) Charlotte Robinson, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, 563pp, ISBN 978-0-857-50734-1
The insertion of private enterprise into space exploration is now a common-place, both in reality and fiction but here writer and TV producer Catherine Robinson adds a new twist – as the tech-bro behind the mission doesn’t actually have the resources to finance it himself he turns to a reality TV production company for the funds. As you might expect, Big Brother Goes To Mars (not the actual title!) launches as a huge ratings winner, but to keep those numbers up, certain drama-inducing prompts must be resorted to at crucial moments.&nbp; Which might be all well and good if we were talking about an isolated house or jungle encampment here on Earth, but when deployed out in deep space… well, it’s not hard to predict that disastrous consequences are just an unthinking ‘made-for-TV’ move away.
And that is what worries Commander Alyssa Wright, who was CapCom during a previous mission when things went horribly wrong. Still living with that trauma, Alyssa is understandably sensitive to any suggestion that corners might be, if not actually cut, then perhaps smoothed down to satisfy the production company’s demands. Her suspicions regarding the manipulation of mission parameters are further bolstered by an accident during a simulated capsule splashdown in which she is injured and, consequently, replaced.
Interleaved with Alyssa’s investigations are two other narratives: one switches focus to on-board shenanigans as Mars One heads for the Red Planet and we get a real sense of the way the claustrophobic conditions and crew paranoia feed on each other as things start to go awry. The other is very much Earth-based and centres on Li Jia, an unassuming resident of Hong Kong, who lives with her brother Kai and his cat, Orion. Kai is to all appearances just a humble IT worker but then suddenly disappears under mysterious circumstances. In her increasingly frantic attempts to find him, Jia discovers that the chip in Orion’s neck contains some kind of computer code which is important enough for the Chinese authorities to seek her arrest. With the help of well-connected friends, she manages to cross the Pacific on an environmentalist research ship and eventually arrives in the USA.
As these different threads are drawn together, the connection between the code, the machinations of the TV company and the increasingly dangerous goings-on aboard the spaceship starts to be uncovered. Having finally met, Alyssa and Jia are then propelled towards the appropriately dramatic denouement in which all is revealed and the good guys save the day.
All of which would make for a rattlingly good read were it not for the fact that the whole thing is written in the present tense. And while that does convey a sense of immediacy, which works well in the action-oriented episodes, it also brings overwhelmingly to the fore the internal emotional life of the characters, to the point where it all becomes, frankly, a little tiresome. Personally, I felt the story on its own was engaging enough without the need to adopt this kind of emotionally enhanced literary style.
Steven French
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