average collection, all juveniles, The contributions from Kage Baker, Nnedi Okorafer, Ellen Klages and John Barnes I found outstanding the Barnes isn't really a Mars story, so much as a pioneer love story that happens to be set there.
Cory Doctorow's tale was OK, but as usual with his stuff I felt bludgeoned, I couldn't get through Ian McDonald's story, and the Kim Stanley Robinson was, I dunno, phoned in.
The rest were at least OK too, competently thought out and readable, well this book has opened my eyes, these short stories peaked my interest in other authors that i may later check out, I listened to the novella "Martian Chronicles" by Cory Doctorow as a twopart podcast from Escape Pod,
The Mars colony consists of theoriginal colonists and the children who have been born since their arrival, and now the second ship is heading for Mars with anothercolonists.
The children on board have been playing a game called "Martian Chronicles" for years on Earth and are continuing to play it on the first half of the journey, knowing that their status in the game and everything they have built up so far will be lost when they switch over to playing on the Mars servers and have to start from scratch.
It's a thoughtprovoking tale of class, business, and colonisation, and no whining is allowed,
/for this novella. A couple of the stories in here were really great I especially liked the ones by Ellen Klages, Kage Baker, and Cory Doctorow.
Even the ones that didn't really grab me were pretty good, just not my taste, Overall I found this to be an enjoyable, thoughtprovoking, and worthwhile anthology, As is always the case with short story collections, some of these are more memorable than others, with Rachel Swirsky and Cory Doctorow's standing out for me among the rest.
This was shelved with the "YA" tag in my library, but in spite of the younger protagonists in most of these stories, I can bet that most adults would enjoy them as well.
I hope kids are reading this stuff, however, and dreaming of Mars, Since this current generation has really sucked up the areas of space flight and exploration, maybe if more of the younger generations are intrigued by the horizons of the red planet and beyond, we'll have the possibility to actually succeed in becoming a biplanetary species.
I might have missed a story or two in this one, but I read most of them, I especially liked Cory Doctorow's story, Dawn States
Science Fiction
Life on Marswhat would it be like The book of short stories by the same title explores this option in a myriad of ways, from colonizing the red planet, to travel between earth and Mars, to living on Mars as an accepted way of life.
Each short story is a wellwritten and contained plot that has a connecting theme with the other stories with Mars being the connection.
Some stories are about racial differences, some are love stories, and some are about the courage to hope for a better future.
Science fiction fans will love the plots and futuristic themes of each story,
The first story, also my favorite, is about Attlee a young girl growing up and knowing nothing other than the red planet and the struggle to survive.
However, she has bigger dreams than always planting vegetables and killing cockroaches, She needs to believe in herself in order to achieve these dreams and overcome the
selfdoubt she has, This is a universal theme and like many of the stories these ideas are even present on another planet,
Some of the stories were really boring, and had hardly anything to do with living on Mars in thest place.
The other stories were good or decent, Stories generally centered on a teenage person figuring out what they are good at and want to contribute to their Mars society.
I enjoyed the range of authors and situations as limited by a Mars location, Turns out this book is mostly for, and about, teenagers, but I enjoyed all of the stories to various degrees nonetheless.
Excellent collection, great authors. A strong compilation of short stories, though some weren't so much to my taste, Of them, I really loved "Goodnight Moons" and "The Taste of Promises," which built plots around the issues of human adaptation to the Martian environment.
Attlee and the Long Walk by Kage Baker in order to be accepted into a club, Attlee needs to go on an quest to find a huge cockroach.
stars
The Old Man and the Martian Sea by Alastair Reynolds Yukimi runs away in a cargo ship and lands on an old Marsian outpost.
stars
Wahala by Nnedi Okorafor Planton tries to run away in the desert but a space ship from Mars lands carrying people from the colony.
stars
On Chryse Plain by Stephen Baxter A human from Earth enters into Mars' atmosphere and knocks into two humans from Mars.
stars
First Principle by Nancy Kress as Earth dies, refugees from Earth land on an Martian outpost where humans have been generically modified perspective from a Martian teen.
stars
Martian Chronicles by Cory Doctorow in preparation for going to Mars, people play 'Martian Chronicles' game, but three teens figure out there's more to that than practice.
stars
Goodnight Moons by Ellen Klages as part of the first crew to Mars, a woman discovers she's pregnant.
stars
The Taste of Promises by Rachel Swirsky a runaway teen gets caught trying to steal from a Mars settlement.
stars
Digging by Ian McDonald an almostadult is invited on a digging mission with the team leader,stars
LARP on Mars by Chris Roberson three teens on Mars find a corpse,stars
Martian Heart by John Barnes a young couple goes prospecting on the Martian frontier,stars
Discovering Life by Kim Stanley Robinson scientists hold a press junkets about the discovery of single cell life on mars, but one is concerned.
Katharine is a judge for the Aurealis Awards, This review is the personal opinion of Katharine herself, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.
To be safe, I won't be recording my review here until after the AA are over, Good intro, stories suck though It's an anthology of short stories set on established Martial colonies, A good conceit for a book, and some of the stories were excellent, It only gets three because some of the stories were only okay, and Cory Doctorow's story would not stop lecturing me in a teethgrind way.
Ah, sweet traditional science ficiton that is NOT a dystopia I'm getting very tired of that subset of the genre how I've missed you!
This was a nice collection of short stories that captured the possibilities of a Mars colonized.
The scope was generally pretty similar in each story, Most imagined what life might be like for those who colonized Mars, There were a few unique stand outs the first one, Cory Doctorow's, the one with genetic engineering, amp the tale of the old man recounting his past were a few of my favorites sorry I'm no good with titles.
This collection probably won't convert anyone who is adamantly antiscifi, but for those who want a broader view of the genre beyond the Hunger Games wannabes, it's a winner.
I finished reading Life on Mars this morning, Its a collection of SF short stories set on Mars after weve started putting people on it either as tourists or immigrants.
Interestingly the publisher is Viking a name significant in the recent history Mars, I enjoyed all the stories, which is frequently not the case in anthologies, especially multiple author anthologies, For some reason Ive been picking up quite a few SF books on Mars lately, Not sure if there are more available recently, or its just that the recent film adaptation of Burroughs sitelinkA Princess of Marspiqued my interest.
When I buy a multiple author anthology, I generally look over the table of contents for names I recognize.
In this collection ofstories, I saw the names of three authors I almost always enjoy: sitelinkKage Baker, sitelinkCory Doctorow, and sitelinkIan McDonald.
The collection started with Kage Bakers “Attlee and the Long Walk”, I like it when a collection starts with a strong story and this one fit the bill, It wasnt my favorite story in the collection, but it was very enjoyable, Its the story of a teens initiation into the important section of her peer group,
The second story “The Old Man and the Martian Sea” by Alastair Reynolds was also quite good, Like Bakers story, this story features a young teenage girl as its protagonist, I might have a soft spot in my heart for those sitelinkPodkayne of Mars is probably my favorite early Heinlein.
“Wahahla” by Nnedi Okorafor continues the younggirlprotagonist theme, but unlike most of the other stories in the collection, it takes place on Earth.
In an interesting turn, the people of Earth are the ones who have changed, not the Martian colonists,
The next story, “On Chryse Plain” by Stephen Baxter, features a trio of young protagonists, two male and one female in a tale of a meeting of cultures and survival.
In “First Principal” by Nancy Kress, the theme of young central characters continues, This time the main character is female and born on Mars and the other central character is male and a newly arrived colonist from Earth.
“Martian Chronicles” by Cory Doctorow is the longest story in the collection and probably my favorite, The story revolves around a young colonist to be male and his two friends one male and one female on their way to a Mars that is not what they or their parents are expecting.
“Martian Chronicles” is a popular video game on Earth and Mars, but the game is played differently on Mars,
In “Goodnight Moons” by Ellen Klages we have the first story where the main character is an adult.
Its the story an early manned expedition to Mars and about the fallibility of plans,
“The Taste of Promises” by Rachel Swirsky is a return to young, teenage protagonists, This time the main character is a boy travelling with his brother on a frontier Mars where law rules only the domed colonies.
“Digging” by Ian McDonald was an interesting story with yet another teenaged main character, this one female, The story took a novel approach to creating an atmosphere on Mars,
In “LARP on Mars” by Chris Roberson we have a trio of young students all male on a field trip to the surface of Mars to prevent failing a science class.
The next to last story “Martian Heart” by John Barnes features adults as the main characters in an attempt to survive first financially then physically in a hostile environment.
And finally, there was Kim Stanley Robinsons “Discovering Life”, the odd man out, This was the only story that was not original to this collection, and the only one that takes place before anyone ever sets foot on Mars.
Not much action here, its the story of scientists at JPL after the discovery of Martian life,
All in all a good collection of stories,
First class science fiction writers lend their considerable talent to this volume of wildly differing tales about going to and living on Mars.
Each story is captivatingly imaginative, Kage Baker opens the fun with a story about a girl acting on a dare from her friends, and making an astonishing discovery and conquering her fear at the same time.
Readers won't look back after this, For older teens and adults, An interesting collection of YA stories, This short story collection containsworks from contemporary science fiction writers, The protagonists of the stories range in age fromto midforties, These stories are varied in their themes and language some with profanity so it is difficult to give appropriate age range.
I would like to say that the only common denominator is that they are all about the colonization of Mars at different stages of development, and that the authors use the same Martian topography and scientific details that were recovered from NASA missions to add credibility.
There are stories of friendship, racism, suicide, social class, dedication, and the idea that colonizing Mars to escape problems on Earth will never work as long as we are still human.
The problem with this collection is that it feels too long it would be a stronger book if it cut half of the stories, particularly the Chris Roberson story which was lost in videogame and roleplaying game jargon with no gripping plot.
The stand outs are the stories by Kage Baker, Alastair Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Klages, Rachel Swirsky, and John Barnes.
Though thesewriters are varied in their subject, their stories have the most appeal to teens and adults and are written in an engaging style.
I really enjoyed this collection, It was varied both in link and subject matter, yet the stories seemed to flow smoothly from one to the next.
I never felt that I was looking at multiple Mars rather, I was immersed in the same Mars during different time periods.
I higly recommend this for any avid science fiction fan! Lets go to Mars, The timing for this anthology couldnt be better, The fascination with Mars endures and it was prudent of Strahan to see that especially now the interest grows, This exquisite collection will electrify your short story collection, Life on Mars is a followup anthology to Strahans The Starry Rift published in, Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier is a science fiction anthology that takes as its leaping off point that we do go to Mars.
In some stories, we have been on Mars for a significant stretch of time, Imagine that! Cory Doctorow, Ellen Klages, Nancy Kress, Kim Stanley Robinson are among the dozen authors who share their point of view on Martian life.
The fact that each of the authors present unique details relevant to life on the Red Planet makes it feel like we have already colonized the planet.
Aspects of life dont seem all that different that life on Earth, but there is something that is a true problem.
“Goodnight Moons” by Ellen Klages was inspired by reading Ray Bradburys Martian Chronicles and Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House on the Prairie, eating a Mars bar and eating lunch with a rocket scientist.
Each story ends with an brief author biography and an authors note that divulges what inspired the story, A great addition to any short story or science fiction collection, .
Collect Life On Mars: Tales From The New Frontier Designed By Jonathan Strahan Issued As Textbook
Jonathan Strahan