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* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Scientific American 's #1 Book for 2023 * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Times Best Science and Environment Book of 2023 * A Tor.com Best Book of 2023 *
"Exceptional. . . Forceful, engaging and funny . . . This book will make you happy to live on this planet -- a good thing, because you're not leaving anytime soon." -- New York Times Book Review
From the bestselling authors of Soonish , a brilliant and hilarious off-world investigation into space settlement
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away--no climate change, no war, no Twitter--beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren't so sure it's a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn't spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won't create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you've ever wondered about, and many you've never considered:
Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon's Peaks of Eternal Light--and what happens if you're left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what's the legal status of space cannibalism?
With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal , the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself--whether and how to become multiplanetary.
Get in, we're going to Mars.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"There is no urgent need to settle space" and "most of the pro-settlement arguments are wrong," argue Kelly Weinersmith, a behavioral ecology professor at Rice University, and her cartoonist husband Zach in the wickedly irreverent follow-up to their 2017 collaboration, Soonish. They contend it will likely take centuries to overcome the logistical challenges--including the development of long-term waste management systems and laws to settle conflicts over sovereignty--posed by establishing a colony on Mars, the moon, or a free-floating space station. The Weinersmiths explore other critical issues, such as how to have sex in reduced gravity ("The physics will be a little tricky because every action has an equal and opposite reaction") and generate energy (harnessing solar power on Mars would be complicated by the fact that "the day is about half as bright" as on Earth). They also gleefully tear down frequently cited reasons for settling space, suggesting that "leaving a 2°C warmer Earth for Mars," which has an average surface temperature of -60°C, "would be like leaving a messy room so you can live in a toxic waste dump." The cheeky tone is loads of fun, and Zach's humorous illustrations of, for instance, contraptions proposed to facilitate zero-gravity sex, entertain. It adds up to a boisterous takedown of techno-utopianism. Illus. (Nov.)
Guardian Review
"Unless it is stopped," tweeted Elon Musk, "the woke mind virus will destroy civilisation and humanity will never reached Mars." A compelling point, even if it does show that genius boy needs grammar lessons. Would the 18th-century pioneers have managed to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population, exterminate all those buffalo and pave the way for that stupid dome in Las Vegas if they were a bunch of pearl-clutching wuss bags? Think about it. The basic argument is that the human race is doomed if it doesn't revive that frontier spirit, and will remain confined to this increasingly useless planet. If we don't boldly go, then we must surely stagnate. As Carl Sagan wrote: "Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood." We need to chisel our jaws and put on space boots. Woah! say Kelly and Zach Weinersmith in this romp through the many rooms of a space folly. "Leaving 2C warmer Earth for Mars would be like leaving a messy room so you can live in a toxic waste dump." The Weinersmiths - Kelly a biologist specialising in parasitic worms, Zack a cartoonist with a beard - consider that Musk's dream of populating Mars by 2050 has become plausible essentially because tech costs have fallen in inverse proportion to the man-baby hubris of Musk and his coevals. Personally, I can imagine only one thing worse than a six-month, 140m-mile one-way trip in a small capsule eating slop and defecating into baggies. And that's spending the journey with a really annoying co-passenger, namely Musk, showing me blueprints for his new Martian company settlement, which the authors chillingly dub Muskow. But if that's the worst I can imagine, then I need to try harder. Unpleasantness will escalate on arrival according to this amusingly literal and impeccably scientific war-gaming of what would actually happen. The average surface temperature is -60C (-76F). There's no breathable air, but plenty of dust storms that blot out the sun for weeks at a time. On the plus side, radiation is plentiful. There's no soil, but lots of regolith - gravel, basically - which is so useless for agriculture that, if you've seen Matt Damon in The Martian, you'll know this would mean developing a taste for space potatoes with a faecal tang. It's like an off-planet Death Valley with fewer services and no coffee shops. Not even a Costa. What's more, we have negligible experience of the kind of closed-loop ecosystems that we would need to survive on Mars. Yes there have been experiments, such as Biosphere 2, a 3.14-acre airtight greenhouse in Arizona where half-feral chickens refused to lay eggs and were often eaten by pigs. After a year, the humans, who'd been surviving on half-ripe bananas and unpalatable beans used for growing animal feed, emerged gaunt and starving. And neither Biosphere 2 nor the International Space Station are big enough to tell us enough about how we would live on Mars. In any case, the most likely Martian settlements will not be glass domes but underground lava tunnels repurposed and supplied with breathable air and drinkable water. Ideal for those who want to pull back the curtains every morning for a view of walls made of volcanic rock. "Mars," Elton John told us on Rocket Man, "ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell." What he didn't say is that it ain't no place to conceive a kid, neither. As the Weinersmiths explain, producing offspring to settle this toxic hellscape will prove a fascinatingly risky business. Sex on low-gravity Mars seems to be impeded by fluids not flowing in the right direction. On page 76, there's a cartoon of a "pregnodrome", a kind of birthing tilt-a-whirl designed to simulate Earth-like gravity. Prospective mothers, like test tubes, will have to be strapped into this cosmic centrifuge if they are to breed successfully. That's before you even consider how tiny the settler gene pool would be. Which is what leads us to this chilling quote from a specialist in extraterrestrial ethics: "We assume that the Martian colony environment would favour ¿ liberal abortion policy because the birth of a disabled child would be highly detrimental to the colony." We haven't even set foot there and they're already talking space eugenics. The book reminds us that exploration is predicated on the suffering of pioneers. The first dog in space, Laika, jetted off with no means to return to Earth, proving once and for all how evil the Soviets were. Astronaut John Glenn spent four hours in orbit on board Friendship 7 in 1962 wearing a probe (depicted in a scale model in the book) placed where the sun doesn't shine, though whether that was essential to the mission or some kind of pervy quirk is uncertain. Big picture: Laika, we salute you for your sacrifice. But, of course, the cold war no longer provides a spur to national space programmes. Instead, a private space "bastardocracy" consisting of Bezos, Musk and Branson will be monopolising Martian real estate long before today's superpowers set up shop there - and decades after Britain has sourced enough rubber bands to launch its Neasden Explorer. In another reversal of cold war certainties, even though the Weinersmiths are - there's no easy way to say this - Americans, they write like communists. They disdain John Locke's thesis that anyone who mixes their labour with the land then owns it (the basis of centuries of justification for the rapacious acquisition of property) and prefer Elinor Ostrom's philosophy of the commons. At the moment, after all, space is inspiringly unclaimed. It is one big commons, among the few places in the universe not zoned to become a strip mall or luxury flats. Sadly, once China and the US get their acts together and join the tech bros on Mars, the authors calculate that the risk of nuclear war in space to settle interplanetary disputes will be non-trivial. That brings a glimmer of good news, though: as far as I understand the science, we remaining Earthlings will be able to kick back over pink gins and enjoy the light show, safe behind our magnetosphere. Which is just one more reason to stay at home.
Kirkus Review
An entertaining illustrated assessment of space settlement. This book is, to put it simply, a romp. The Weinersmiths published a similar book in 2017, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, and their latest deals with the practical problems of creating settlements in space. The authors, self-described "space geeks" who "love visionary plans for a glorious future," collected a huge amount of research material for the project. They started out as optimistic about the prospects for space colonies, but the more they learned, the more they understood the staggering resource costs and the complex technical problems. Much of the recent interest in space settlements stems from the shrinking costs of putting satellites into low orbit, but this does not transfer into the cost of moving the needed materials to the moon, Mars, a space station, or another planet. Moreover, research into the long-term effects of low gravity on human biology does not bode well. The Weinersmiths have a good time discussing the difficulty of human reproduction in non-Earth environments, but for a settlement meant to be self-sustaining, it would be a real issue. An even more difficult question involves the laws that would apply, as existing treaties are clearly outdated. Despite the optimism of SF writers and the current crop of adventurous billionaires, the authors believe that space settlements would probably replicate the conflicts and divisions of Earth-bound societies: Humans, after all, remain human. Though the authors strike a humorous tone, they don't neglect serious topics, and they do believe that one day space will be colonized. However, the timeline is centuries rather than decades, and there must be more focus on the practical realities than on visionary hyperbole. One way or another, this book has a lot to offer. A fun, informative read that puts the pop into popular science. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The wife-and-husband writing team who penned Soonish (2017), a biologist and a cartoonist, respectively, take on the rough realities of space settlement in their immersive and entertaining examination of how close humanity actually is to living among the stars. The Weinersmiths are upfront about their major reservations about human beings living in space anytime soon as they delve into the realities that might keep people earthbound for the foreseeable future. The most notable one might be humankind's own biology, which is specifically designed for Earth's atmosphere and gravity; the astronauts at the International Space Station have seen their bone mass and muscles shrink during their months in space. The Weinersmiths also note that since no one has ever tried to get pregnant or give birth in space, there's no scientific data on what less gravity and more radiation would do to a fetus or a newborn. Biology isn't the only barrier; finding a suitable habitat, sourcing material and energy, and even navigating space law, born out of the geopolitical competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, all present daunting challenges. Despite their conclusion that humanity isn't quite ready for life in space, the Weinersmiths' passion and enthusiasm shine through every page of this absorbing, lively exploration.
Library Journal Review
Elon Musk has suggested that a city-size colony on Mars could be in place within 30 years of arrival. Here spouses Kelly (a bioscientist) and Zach Weinersmith (a cartoonist) examine the obstacles to Mars living. The challenges of life in outer space have been overcome on a small-scale and short-term basis, but the long-term requires more research about the effects of radiation, low gravity, and temperature extremes, the authors argue. Much is currently unknown, from the long-term effects on the human body to specifics about health, fertility, procreation, and child development. Providing breathable air for a city and governing large numbers of people on Mars must also be considered. How many people are needed to create a sustainable population? Will corporations provide housing, food, medical care, and transportation? What happens when there is a conflict? The authors bring a marvelous zest to their narration of the book's interstitial "nota bene" sections, while primary narrator Brittany Pressley performs the bulk of the book with enthusiasm and perfect timing and brings out the authors' often humorous arguments and fascinating asides. VERDICT The Weinersmiths' (Soonish) lighthearted and accessible production is food for thought about space settlement, highlighting the many issues that must be addressed before humankind can realistically consider such an endeavor.--Joanna M. Burkhardt