British F&SF grandmaster Aldiss (Common Clay, 1996, etc.) teams up with distinguished physicist-mathematician Penrose
to offer a polemic, presented from a wealth of viewpoints, whose binding principle is that Mars should be left pristine, a refuge
for science and contemplation, rather than systematically exploited. Less than 40 years from now, Mars is home to a scientific
colony devoted to searching for the Omega Smudge, a persistently elusive quantum entity that, once detected, will reveal the
secrets of gravity and, possibly, human consciousness itself. Populations of transients are also permitted to visit Mars in reward
for a year of necessary but difficult labor in Earth's deprived regions. The international consortium EUPACUS pays the transport
bills and thus expects to own Mars in due course. But EUPACUS is corrupt, and its spectacular collapse takes Earth's global
economy down with it. So Mars's six thousand souls, utterly isolated, try to create a new kind of society: a practical utopia, free
of the old hatreds, shibboleths, prejudices, and distortions. Scientist-turned-philosopher Tom Jefferies leads the way, mediating
endless debates—in effect, huge town meetings—on profit and labor, religion, sex, crime and punishment, education, etc. Perhaps
astonishingly, problems are solved, agreements reached; Martian society inches toward the ideal. It's not, however, all roses:
dissent, violence, and murder still exist, and Mars society will face extinction or salvation from a source so monstrous as to defy
credence.
Not particularly gripping as fiction, but engrossing and provocative nonetheless.
