Other stories will take you to Mars. This one will take you inside the boardroom, the pub, and the bedroom with the people planning the mission.

Gurdeep is an engineer and a soldier. Georgie's a food scientist. One is pragmatic with a tough outer shell. The other's an optimist, a person of ideas and compassion. Together, they’re humanity’s last hope for survival.

In the span of a single afternoon, the couple find themselves in charge of planning and establishing a self-sustained colony on Mars. They have 160 slots to fill with experts from all over the world as they set about designing an all-new society with its own government, economy, and culture — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
With 1,114 days until the launch, excitement and tensions run high. Earth’s second chance hangs in the balance. Between strict genetic requirements and the dangers of the dystopian almost-present, will everyone make it to the final countdown?

This is a work of neurodiverse, culturally diverse, gender— bendy, socio-politico-economic, drunken-arguments-in-the— pub science fiction, not bang-bang-pew-pew science fiction.

SI CLARKE

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