Deviation, my newly released science fiction, lands smack dab on Mars.
In spite of the massive amounts of research I had a lot of fun on Mars. Actually, scratch that.
Because of the massive amounts of research I had to do, I had a lot of fun on Mars. Astronomy fascinates me. I think stars are cool and pictures of nebula are awesome and … yeah, I’m a nerd. So it’s only natural that my first science fiction novel actually features another planet.
Mars is the planet we tend to like the most when it comes to the idea of relocating the human race. (Or at least branching out. Earth still needs our tender loving care.)
There are many reasons for this but in the interest of this post I’m just going to direct you to HowStuffWorks.com because they already have an awesome article on the hows and the why’s of it. (Yay! Kevin Bonsor!)
Now, I understand that I cheated a bit when it came to terraforming Mars in my book, but that all boils down to story. I wasn’t writing a guidebook to terraforming a planet, I was writing a story about redemption and grief and relationships.
That said, I still wanted to make it believable.
I also wanted to give the information without overwhelming readers with technical jargon. So I made a timeline with news articles. Readers will notice that there’s a snippet of a news article at the beginning of every chapter. That’s where I provided information both on what happened to the female race and how humanity reached Mars.
First we bombed the core … cause Earth’s weird half-molten center is what gives us the tectonic plates, which is what gives us the magnetic field and atmosphere that keeps us … you know … alive and stuff. There’s probably a lot of things wrong with the theory of bombing the Martian core but the very concept made my creative brain go into hyper-drive, so I used it.
Then, because things weren’t growing fast enough for us, we built a mirror-like greenhouse thing around Mars. (No, really, check out the HowStuffWorks.com article. It’s totally plausible.) Mars is further away from the sun so we needed to catch all that heat and redirect it to the planet’s surface.
And then … and this is my favorite part … we “seed bombed” the planet’s surface.
Yes, that’s right. Seed bombs. They are exactly what they sound like; bombs with seeds and fertilizer and all the good stuff plants need to get started.
Add a little water, a little time, and a lot of luck and viola! Terraforming!
Now then … scientists across the globe are likely to slaughter me for turning Mars purple and genetically altering animals to live on the planet. Those are all story elements. I rely heavily on the fact that I am not a scientist, I am a novelist. In those instances I would hope that people remember they are reading a work of fiction and focus instead on the characters rather than the mechanics.
Honestly, I think we’ll live on Mars one day. It won’t be tomorrow, but some day.
AJMaguire 