Telling A Very American Story On Mars

A central pillar of any American story is one’s willingness to go to hard places and do hard things so that you might rely on yourself, provide for your family, and truly be free. The goal is for the next generation to have an easier time than you did. Our history has been written by men and women who lived and died by this rule.

It wasn’t the wealthy trust-fund babies of England who carved plantations out of raw wilderness at Plymouth and Jamestown in the 1600s, or hacked their way across the Cumberland Gap in the 1700s, or wrangled viable states out of the hell of the southwest desert in the 1800s; those things were done by grunts who knew the job was going to suck but they jumped into it anyway, hoping for the slim chance of success. Many of them died. The survivors built the foothold of the country we have today.

Four hundred years after the Mayflower sailed into Cape Cod, the corners of our map are filled in, and the world is bereft of frontiers. Yet we as a people haven’t changed; we aim to expand, to find new ground, and the next wilderness awaits us in the skies. The 20^th century saw the start of the Space Age, and things are only accelerating. Before long, we’ll be looking at dome cities on the moon, and perhaps in my lifetime there will be permanent residents on Mars. When that time comes, that profoundly American quality — the willingness to Embrace the Suck — will once again be necessary to make it work. Travis Corcoran, author of Red State Mars, understands this quality and injects it into this futuristic tale of Martian conflict.

Red State Mars is about a cluster of American families who are into their second generation on the Red Planet, living in a network of domed cities in the year 2126. China and the U.S. kicked off World War III by swapping plagues and nukes, leaving both sides wary of one another just as interplanetary travel becomes a regular occurrence. Earth’s politics continue to be what they are, and the erstwhile Martians decide not to stick around for it to get any worse. For a while, things on Mars — while difficult — are going well. They’re handling this unique frontier.

Then the Chinese send their own people to build dome cities next door. At first the Martians (Americans) get along with their new neighbors, even entering into mutually beneficial trade arrangements, but the inevitable does eventually happen, and the Chinese government decides to put the American domes under its thumb before they get too powerful. A rapid-fire series of escalating conflicts soon force the Martians to make a choice: do they accept the unjust terms of their would-be Chinese rulers, or do they go to war and risk annihilation to secure their freedom?

Well, it’s an American story through-and-through, so you can guess the answer. That said, nothing comes easy to Corcoran’s characters, and they face conflict both inside and outside the domes. The Martians consist mainly of a few named families: the Atkinses, Newcastles, Hyltons, Mackenzies, and Hollinses, each defined by their specialties and temperaments. They’re intelligent. They’re hard-working. And they’re aggressively stubborn — something that living in a dome on a hostile planet forces them to be. Town hall meetings are often reduced to shouting matches and at one point there’s even a duel, despite the Chinese military waiting to conquer their domes and enslave them all. The question permeating through every level of the story is: What does it cost to be free? Followed by: Will I pay it?

Despite taking place on another planet, in a world of regular A.I. access, daily 3-D printing of goods, and commonplace drone usage, the Martians are faced with the same questions as our Founding Fathers in the late eighteenth century. They can live comfortably and peacefully with a collar on their necks and someone else’s hand in their wallets, or they can purchase the life they want with the most precious resources of all – blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a question that few enough of us ask ourselves today as we hand over huge percentages of our income to an insatiable machine, one that would discard us the moment we become even a little bit inconvenient. We endure it because it is easy and comfortable to do so.

Martian farmers wouldn’t have that luxury. In Corcoran’s novel, they rely on trades with the Chinese for “computational feedstock” that goes into their 3-D printers, making everything from tools to engine parts, to clothing, even drones. A change in that trade deal forces the Martians to decide between handing over a significant amount of their possessions and basically selling themselves into slavery, or else facing the Chinese military with no real backup from Earth. One choice would be humiliating, but comfortable. The other would require a great deal of hardship and suffering with no guarantee of success — yet no matter the outcome, the Martians would own themselves. Live free or die, literally.

Everything else in Red State Mars is downstream of this question: What will you pay to be free? In a move reminiscent of Heinlein (one of Corcoran’s literary heroes), he puts this philosophical demand under every layer of his story, and up against every character in it. By extension, the reader is made to ask himself the same thing. Fiction for entertainment’s sake has its own merits; fiction that captures the true essence of an entire culture and weaves it through six hundred pages of high-flying adventure on Mars is even better, and Corcoran has succeeded on that front.

Red State Mars is an American saga through-and-through. The men of the aforementioned families are a little bit Sam Houston, a little bit Ulysses S. Grant, a little bit George Patton. When Waylon Atkins and Jim Newcastle duel in the middle of it all, they do so in the spirit of Myles Standish and Stephen Hopkins — men whose unbreakable spirits were essential to their success, but could not be separated from their pride. They succeeded in spite of their flaws because above all else, they would not give up.

The book tips the scales at a hefty 620 pages, with a content warning for abundant profanity and combat violence. The hard-science elements showcase Corcoran’s engineering background, and despite its length, the story moves at a great pace no matter what’s happening on the page. A prequel, Red State Earth, is currently in the works, and given the quality of the backstory Corcoran put into Mars, I dare say we’re in for a treat — to say nothing of accurate predictions for the near future.

Graham Bradley is a second-generation trucker, avid reader, and longtime book reviewer. He has also published over a dozen novels and short stories. His Substack is Trucker Man Reads.