I’m not someone who’s deeply invested in the idea of colonising space – I’ve dipped my toe in sci-fi and read about the exploits of everyone’s favourite rocket-building billionaires but that’s as far as it goes. But A City on Mars is a fun and fascinating read. Dr Kelly Weinersmith is a scientist, Zach a cartoonist, and between them they make the practicalities of space travel and settlement intelligible.

If you want to know how to have sex in zero gravity, or about the time that astronauts were persuaded to advertise carcinogenic milk by drinking it in space, or the legal status of Buzz Aldrin’s discarded faeces on the moon (and their potential as a growing medium for future settlers) then this is the book for you.

The first part of A City on Mars is all about what’s possible and what we still don’t know (spoiler alert – a lot). Getting there is one thing, but staying another. Colonies imply reproduction – could you give birth in space? Could a child survive? If she does, what is she going to eat? (And breathe of course.)

A big part of the problem is that all the people who have gone to space so far have been adult (obviously) overachievers – highly intelligent, superfit, extremely driven. They are, by definition, not like the rest of us. They’ve also been for short periods, knowing that, all being well, they’ll be coming home.

The second part of the book, which I admit I skimmed a bit, concerns the law around space (this comes under the heading of Important but not Interesting for this casual reader). The gist of it seems to be that the law is vague, for political reasons, and was mostly formulated at the height of the Cold War. This was a time before small nations and even corporations had access to space travel.

The theory leads onto a consideration of what the implications of the law would be for any future company town in space (hypothetically called Muskow after you-know-who). It’s one thing to be dependent on your employer for food and accommodation but what happens when they control your air supply?

The key takeaway from A City on Mars is that, whatever technology we develop, people will still be people. The constraints of lots of us living together in a confined space won’t vanish because, well, science. If you can’t leave said space, they will only be multiplied. (I always think you can learn everything you need to know about humanity from the state of the staff kitchen in any office.)

The other thing it tells you about people is that the grass is always greener, even when there isn’t any grass, or soil, or rain. We’re willing to trash the perfectly nice planet we’ve got, because the other planet we haven’t met yet might, at some future date, be just-about liveable.

A City on Mars combines scientific rigour with an engaging, breezy style, cool cartoons and easy-to-follow diagrams and graphs. A great read for the space-curious.

At a time when moon landings, and potentially exploration and colonisation there and further afield, are very much in the news this was an interesting book to read.
I'm used to reading positive books from astronauts, with a full "can do" sensibility and so it was good to read this and consider that just because we can doesn't mean we should.
There's also very little hope that 'starting again' on a new planet will mean a fresh start for the human race - we will just take our existing problems with us.

An interesting and thought-provoking read about the idea of colonising somewhere else in space. The Weinersmith's provide a rational, realistic and slightly pessimistic perspective on our prospects on the likelihood of establishing a colony on another planet, space station or celestial body of some other sort. While the title mentions Mars, the remit actually broader than that. A lot of the talk about our chances of building a second human planet as a backup to Earth is often dominated by wild-eyed optimists that haven't done their homework, so this book is a welcome antidote. It's unquestionably well researched and fully thought through. This leads to conclusions that aren't quite so exciting but at least they are grounded in reality.

I feel that the book sometimes struggles to find a good balance between being a light-hearted pop science book and a more weighty, serious take on this subject. The tone is generally fun and easy to read but some sections, such as those about space law, are dry and get very deep into the weeds. I think a more scientific minded person would find this book light on detail and already familiar with much of the material but a general reader would not want chapter and verse on relatively uninteresting subjects even if the writers are trying their best to cover the subject in a fun way.

These minor quibbles aside, I feel like I learned a lot about the practicalities of trying to build communities in space and what the future could hold.

A planets worth of research went into this book. Its a deep dive into all things Mars, or planetary living generally. The book is a collabroative effort by husband and wife team Dr Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith. Each topic explored and referenced to the edge of the orbit of professionals, scholars and enthusists. It's the politics of planets, the science of space and highights the crash landing of any attempts to live long term on another planet. The skills needed, the experiments on society, people and animals needed between now and a possible space faring civilisation which raises many red flags. Any chapter could be explored further into a post apocalyptic or dystopian novel. That section on childbirth in space - it will give you shivers, no matter how many 'sucky pants' we pack to take to our new 'spome' in the stars. Each chapter effectively shuts down the idea of living on mars long term, but they accept that we may find a way to navigate around each obstacle. You'll need more than optimism alone to concur space. The authors, and their imaginary character Astrid, explores the horrors that await us if we're to become a multi-planatary species. The future may be lightyears away, but if we're thinking that far away, on reflection of this book, I feel like I will need an excuse note.

This reviewer would like to be excused from space travel in the future.

A well rounded book. Highly reccomened for the space curiois and sci-fi authors looking for a starting point for the grim reality of spac.e

Humorous popular science is a tough nut to crack, and the Weinersmith's don't exactly crack it here. He's a cartoonist, she's a scientist so the division to labour does seem to be getting him to draw infrequent Randall Munroe-esque gags illustrating the text. The text itself mainly leans on quotidian or nonsense comparisons to carry it over the line, but all of that's fine because the content is strong enough. Because you need to drill past the somewhat misleading title here to the subtitle - Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? Which it happily answers in its introduction, and that answer is pretty much NO.

They are self-deprecating enough to know that this is not the conclusion most readers want, and apologetic enough to all the experts whose knowledge they have aggregated to come up to this conclusion (not least when many of those experts may have a very different opinion. But it is unfortunately a convincing conclusion considering quite how difficult every step of building a permanent colony in space is, and furthermore, quite how much space wants to kill us. For space colony they are looking at something self-sustaining with food, energy, and people - so they get to be nicely prurient about space sex and space poo. And not forgetting, of course, the complexities of space law.

Again they warn the reader in the very beginning that there will be a pretty large section here on space law. It may be that it is due to them being American (which they are largely apologetic about), but the idea of Elon Musk just sending a spacecraft to Mars and claiming eminent domain runs up against several international treaties about who owns what in space and what you can do with it. And they don't see an easy way of changing it in a way that billionaire investors would be happy enough to risk it. It's an interesting and unusual part of the book, in as much as the science and human survivability parts I have considered and seen before. But it is also a bit dry, and no end of stick-figures are going to make the legal shenanigans funny. Though by that point you are two-thirds of the way book (even further if you have checked how much back matter there is) and you might as well keep going.

I really wanted to enjoy this, as it's a topic I'm interested in, but some kind of problem with the file meant that every time there was a 'th' together in a word, they vanished. So I constantly had to stop and figure out what I was reading. I'll look out for the actual book and read it in physical format.

A really fun and interesting overview of the barriers to space settlement in the near term. The science and legal wranglings are challenging knotty subjects made accessible and entertaining (really hard!). A really stand out piece of popular science writing that put me right off going into space!

A very interesting and well researched book, informative and well written.
It's a good picture of what could be the life on Mars
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This was quite an interesting read! I found it vividly painted what a future on Mars could look like. Super interesting.