THE SECRET OF THE MARTIAN GIRL

In Alexander’s SF adventure, a disillusioned war veteran joins an expedition to restore a battle-destroyed Mars colony.

Leif Grettison is an astronaut and former military pilot in the far future. For most of humankind, it is the year 2726, but Leif hails from an older age; his repeat sorties into deep space (in suspended animation) and back, given the ironies of Einsteinian relativity, mean that his returns to Earth are separated by eras, giving him celebrity status as “Starman” Leif the Lucky. After a depressing first contact adventure with an extinct alien civilization, Leif returns to an Earth ravaged by the “Tribulation,” a solar system–wide war fought by opposing forces using deadly computer malware and viruses (that may still post a threat). More than 400 years after his last return, a new North American order, the Commonalty, embraces Leif as a returned hero. Future humanity is obsessed with a legend that tells of a Mars-colony complex, now lifeless, in which a young science prodigy named Oksana Vasylyshyn made a momentous scientific advance before being engulfed by the Tribulation. Now, an international coalition gives Leif and other representatives roles in a mission to Mars, ostensibly to reactivate the ancient, corpse-strewn (but still viable) colony for resettlement. But indications that a Chinese raid caused the community’s demise, as well as confirmation that “Martian Girl” Oksana really did exist, turn the project into a treasure hunt for Oksana’s discovery, a mystery prize of great strategic value. Much of the narrative is devoted to a Ben Bova/Kim Stanley Robinson–like hard SF account of rehabbing a Mars habitat. Grettison, introduced in Starman’s Saga(2019), is an ingratiating hero-narrator, an intelligent tough guy haunted by guilt, ghosts, and lost love while plunging ahead with a fatalist personal code (“This is a bad time to be philosophical, Leif. Deal with the situation in front of you”). Leif the Lucky is a battle-weary action hero disillusioned by power struggles, senseless cruelty, and petty nationalism, and he’s capable of being deadly when he has to. The story’s resolution, while feeling a little truncated, has particular strength and emotional weight; it rises above the norm in space-suited interplanetary thrillers.

Lucky is the reader who follows Alexander’s warrior-hero through this stirring Martian escapade.