Life and Death on Mars
Description
As though landing people safely on Mars weren't daunting enough ...
The Space Race of the Sixties, at the height of the Cold War, had been nail-biting?until the Soviet Union forfeited.
In the thirties?amid a second Cold War?China is not about to lose the race to Mars. Nor is the United States. Nor, quite the wildcard, is a secretive cabal drawn from among the world's multi-billionaires. All of them are scrambling to launch deep-space missions on a schedule that makes the Sixties contest appear lackadaisical.
This competition could only continue on the Red Planet.
More treacherous still? The rivalries, resentments, and distrust that simmer just beneath the surface within each expedition.
More difficult yet? Survival on that arid, radiation-drenched, all-but-airless, planet.
These challenges have somehow fallen into the lap of NASA engineer?and reluctant astronaut?Xander Hopkins.
But the thorniest problem of all? The existential quandary for which neither training nor experience has prepared Xander? Making sense of the seemingly unstoppable plague that has already killed many on Mars, and seems poised to devastate all life on another planet.
Earth.
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Person
A physicist and computer scientist, Edward M. Lerner toiled in the vineyards of high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president. Then, suitably intoxicated, he began writing full time. His novels run the gamut from near-future technothrillers, like Small Miracles and Energized, to traditional SF, like the InterstellarNet series and Dark Secret. Collaborating with NY Times bestselling author Larry Niven, Ed also wrote the Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels. Much of Ed's short fiction has been collected in Creative Destruction and Countdown to Armageddon / A Stranger in Paradise. His nonfiction articles on science and technology centerpiece Frontiers of Space, Time, and Thought: Essays and Stories on The Big Questions. Lerner's 2015 novel, InterstellarNet: Enigma, won the inaugural Canopus Award for interstellar-themed fiction. His writing has also been nominated for Hugo, Locus, and Prometheus awards.
