MAN ON MARS

In this debut SF novel, Mars has been colonized by an unequal alliance of Terrans and ruthless aliens, with an underground human movement taking shape to oppose the extraterrestrials.

Quinn’s series opener envisions the latter part of the 21st century, when Mars colonization has gone forward—but not just by humans. The Gattis entered the solar system and, with superior technology, terraformed the red planet for joint habitability. Officially, the Gattis promote peaceful cooperation alongside Homo sapiens, but they are conquerors by nature. They have an unwholesome habit of cruelly meddling with genetics—their own and other species’—to mutate and sharpen their predator status. In the author’s descriptions, these extraterrestrials run the gamut; some resemble the tentacled invaders of the film Independence Day, and others look almost human. The secret Gatti agenda is to seize Earth once Mars is secured, with the more militant ones calling for human extermination. This has resulted in human-alien clashes on Mars and a deadly “Red Purge” by the Gattis years earlier that quelled resistance by humans, reducing them to a Martian underclass. But a rebel human underground movement with 2,401 members called the Wake plans retaliation. Key members include Don, a resourceful but amnesiac survivor of alien combat, and Shana, a young woman with a medical background whose parents died in the Red Purge. Shana has trouble confessing her ardor for Don. A strange new recruit is Eio, a friendly, rather childlike, bulbous-headed, fourth-dimensional alien (not even made of atoms), stranded on Mars and desperate to return home. If humans can comprehend his superscience, it would give the Wake an advantage. The Eio angle especially makes the narrative an unsteady combination of adult and YA SF, complete with A Wrinkle in Time–esque digression into tesseract cubes; an episode where Shana says nothing worse than “Ouch!” when wounded; and the icky prospect of human romance with the egg-laying Gattis (shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous character Deja Thoris). Still, the enjoyable saga is well paced, and the closing battles will hold readers’ attention to an ending that deftly opens doors to the sequel. Though Martian geography is used, the locale may as well be Vichy France, Communist-run Poland, or any other setting ripe for occupied-territory intrigue.

Valiant humans versus tyrannical aliens, with engaging infusions of romance, comedy, and quantum science.