A City on Mars
BOOK SUMMARY
The instant New York Times bestseller, a brilliant and hilarious off-world investigation into space settlement. Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren't so sure it's a good idea.
Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn't spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won't create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith received her PhD in ecology at the University of California Davis, and is an adjunct faculty member in the Biosciences department at Rice University. Kelly studies parasites that manipulate the behavior of their hosts, and her research has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, BBC World, Science, and Nature. When she isn't studying nature's creepiest wonders, Kelly is writing books with her husband, Zach Weinersmith (creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics). Their first book, Soonish: Ten emerging technologies that'll improve and/or ruin everything, was a New York Times bestseller. Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. He co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Soonish: Ten emerging technologies that'll improve and/or ruin everything and illustrated the New York Times-bestselling Open borders: The science and ethics of immigration. His work has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes, Science Friday, Foreign Policy, PBS, Boingboing, the Freakonomics blog, the Radiolab blog, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, CNN, Discovery Magazine, Nautilus and more. He lives in Virginia with his wife/coauthor and his children/coauthors.
PRAISE
"Cheeky-but-meticulous pop-science book. They look beyond the shiny rockets to give a realistic view of space colonization—urination devices and international legal structures and all." —The New York Times
"This playful 'homesteader's guide' to space settlement presents a bleak view of the pursuit . . . The authors examine the increasingly popular dream of a multi-planetary human race with a skepticism informed by ethical, logistical, and legal anxieties." —The New Yorker
"A wonderful example of what it means to really think a difficult project through, a skill that many of us should acquire . . . The Weinersmiths are self-confessed space geeks who tread a fine line between the sort of constructive critique that would still qualify them as bona fide members of the space-settlement movement and a style of gentle ridicule that might get them rejected as traitors to the cause. A City on Mars is, foremost, a case study in the application of common sense." —Shlomo Angel, Wall Street Journal
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Trade paperback
448 pages
Non-fiction
8.4 in H | 5.4 in W | 0.9 in T | 0.8 lb
