The Red Planet
Cost: £9.99 / $17.30 Publisher: Elliot & Thompson
1Planetary geologist and geophysicist Dr Simon Morden is a writer who has won the prestigious Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for his fiction, and naturally he’s a science fact writer too. His new book The Red Planet is a truly experiential journey through time and across the surface of Mars.
It’s split into a loose chronology of the history of Mars, from its formation through to the present day and into the future, detailing its many mysteries that still baffle us today.
For all his credentials as a scientist, it’s Dr Morden’s pedigree asapart from the myriad of other tomes on the natural history of Mars. He switches much of the heavy terminology out for metaphor, stitching sections together with an easy, flowing narrative. It’s as much about imagination and artistic licence as it is established fact and expert opinion, so step aside dry textbooks and jargonstuffed research papers, is a benchmark in space literature.
