Mars Life (2008) by Ben Bova

I cut my reading teeth on ‘50s and ‘60s scifi authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, and a few others. Probably because so much of his output was aimed directly at the YA market, Heinlein is the one whose work I remember most vividly today, but all of my favorites had one thing in common: a relatively strong emphasis on the “science” part of the term “science fiction.” And that’s the kind of science fiction I’m most likely to enjoy and remember today even though I do like a well written space opera or alien invasion novel now and then. (My favorite scifi novel of the last few years is Andy Weir’s The Martian, a novel in which the science is almost a main character of its own.) 

Although it’s a little too light on the scientific details to suit me, Ben Bova’s Mars Life does place an emphasis on science over wild fantasy to tell its tale of a Mars exploration mission having to be shut down due to budgetary limitations. It’s come down to a choice of spending money on space exploration or on resettling the millions of people around the world who have been displaced by the rising tides of global warming. Not so hard a choice, really.

But it couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the team on Mars.

A team of anthropologists digging beneath previously discovered  60-million-year-old Martian cliff dwellings has just discovered an actual fossil in what they believe to be a small city located below the cliff dwellings. But that fossil, even with the discovery of an adjacent Martian cemetery filled with the bones of ancient Martians, will not be enough to save the project because the Mars project has more than just money problems - it has very powerful enemies actively working to shut it down for good. As in forever.

The New Morality, a dominant group of religious fundamentalists is so politically powerful that no politician running for office dares run without its endorsement. New Morality believes the type of archeological work proposed for Mars is a threat to its core religious beliefs. If God, or perhaps even another God, created a Martian population and then destroyed it what does that say about their own relationship to God? Is everything they believe about to be proven wrong? New Morality already has ensured that all remaining government funding has been pulled from the project, and now they are intimidating private donors to follow suit.

Mars Life is as much about politics and personal relationships as it is science fiction. It is a cynical look at what motivates peoples and governments and just how fortunate we often are to have a handful of good people turn up in exactly the right spot at the right time when we need them there most. Mars Life is unlikely ever to be considered a scifi classic, but it is an interesting look at what it might be like to be trapped on another planet with only a limited number of people around for support.   

(Mars Life, following Mars and Return to Mars, is the third book in Ben Bova’s Mars series.)