One Way puts a crew of convicted lifers on Mars to build a habitat for the NASA astronauts on the way. It was supposed to be robots doing the work, but the corp with the contract happened to have a subsidiary running a max security prison, and it turns out robots are hard to build and expensive besides. So they sent seven cons and a minder. What they didn’t count on was murder. Or maybe they did.  

Full Review will be published in SFRevu April 1, ttp://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=17835

If you needed to send a construction crew to Mars to build a research habitat before NASA’s best and brightest arrive you might send robots to do the job because they don’t need “man-rated” spacecraft to deliver them, and because nobody’s going to care if they die, er…break down. Well, considering how attached people are to actual Mars rovers, that might not be quite true, but the hard part is building AIs that can handle the unknown without getting stuck, which is nearly impossible when you’re talking about a task that’s never been done. Sending humans gives you flexibility, but the costs go up, both in terms of money and public relations.

Unless they’re humans no one cares about.

Which is how seven cons serving life sentences, a mix of rough construction types, a doctor who was a little too willing to end her patients suffering, and Frank Kittridge, the former owner of a construction company who killed the his son’t drug dealer, all would up getting quick frozen and shipped to the red planet.  Along with the cons they sent a corporate overseer to keep an eye on things. Seven cons, several of them murderess, and a corporate asshole with one-way tickets to a frozen planet and a job that no one really knows is possible. What could go wrong?

Plenty, of course, but our crew is resourceful, if marginally trained, and with Frank more or less leading them, they’re making great progress. If only freak accidents would stop killing them off. But what fun would that be?

The author is listed as S.J. Morden, but science fiction readers may already know him as Simon Morden, the author of a series of stories about “everyone’s favorite sweary Russian physicist,” Samuil Petrovitch. Amazon’s S.J. Morden page doesn’t make the connection, and my speculation is that the author is trying to pull in a new crop of readers, specifically fans of Andy Weir’s The Martian.

Indeed, this may be the book Andy Weir should have written to follow up The Martian, rather than the one he did (See Artemis review) . It’s got that “let’s figure it out” vibe that was fun in The Martian, coupled with group dynamics of a crew of lifers thrown together under tremendous stress. Not to mention the corporate goon. Frank’s already questionable integrity is compromised by a deal he’s cut with the goon to keep a lid on things and get a ride home in return, though I have no idea why he should trust a corporation.  That promise slows him down more than it will the reader as the deaths mount and Frank struggles to understand what’s happening.

I love this, right up to the ending, but when I chatted with the author he told me that some readers had seemed traumatized by how things turned out. Seriously? Have they read “The Cold Equations?” Space, or Mars, in this case,  is ready to kill you anytime you stop paying attention, and will a little help from humans it’s worse than that. Readers should enjoy watching the shrinking crew face challenges and betrayals, but the author has promised me that even worse fates befall anyone who survives in the next book: No-Way. That should be fun too.