{"id":4667,"date":"2018-02-23T15:02:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T20:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4667"},"modified":"2018-05-01T12:42:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T16:42:11","slug":"one-way-by-s-j-morden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/one-way-by-s-j-morden\/","title":{"rendered":"One Way by S. J. Morden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oneway\"<\/a>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\u2019t count on was murder. Or maybe they did. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Full Review will be published in SFRevu\u00a0April 1,<\/strong> ttp:\/\/www.sfrevu.com\/php\/Review-id.php?id=17835<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If you needed to send a construction crew to Mars to build a research habitat before NASA\u2019s best and brightest arrive you might send robots to do the job because they don\u2019t need \u201cman-rated\u201d spacecraft to deliver them, and because nobody\u2019s going to care if they die, er\u2026break 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\u2019re talking about a task that\u2019s never been done. Sending humans gives you flexibility, but the costs go up, both in terms of money and public relations.<\/p>\n

Unless they\u2019re humans no one cares about.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Along 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?<\/p>\n

Plenty, of course, but our crew is resourceful, if marginally trained, and with Frank more or less leading them, they\u2019re making great progress. If only freak accidents would stop killing them off. But what fun would that be?<\/p>\n

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 \u201ceveryone\u2019s favorite sweary Russian physicist,\u201d Samuil Petrovitch. Amazon\u2019s S.J. Morden page doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s The Martian<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, this may be the book Andy Weir should have written to follow up The Martian<\/strong>, rather than the one he did (See Artemis review) . It\u2019s got that \u201clet\u2019s figure it out\u201d vibe that was fun in The Martian<\/strong>, coupled with group dynamics of a crew of lifers thrown together under tremendous stress. Not to mention the corporate goon. Frank\u2019s already questionable integrity is compromised by a deal he\u2019s 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. \u00a0That promise slows him down more than it will the reader as the deaths mount and Frank struggles to understand what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cThe Cold Equations?\u201d Space, or Mars, in this case,\u00a0 is ready to kill you anytime you stop paying attention, and will a little help from humans it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4667"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4673,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions\/4673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}