In a world marked by conflicts and climate crises, it is almost natural to look toward Space, in search of a new planet… The great classics of science fiction have done so, the major space agencies (think of the Artemis mission cycle) do so, and contemporary writers are doing it as well.
Among these, emerges Charlotte Robinson, an Englishwoman from Essex who has long worked in television, making her fiction debut with Mars One (Longanesi, translation by Annamaria Raffo).
Next Stop: Mars…
Four years after the failure of a NASA mission to Mars, Lars Anders, a Finnish billionaire, is ready to launch his private expedition: a one-way journey to the Red Planet, continually recorded and turned into a reality show about the “conquest” of Mars. An unprecedented venture, financially colossal, and a direct challenge to agencies around the world.
And it is precisely in this context that Mars One opens, a science fiction novel that chooses the path of a near-future and plausible scenario, without exotic technologies or improbable procedures. Indeed, Robinson moves with care in the preparation and development of the mission, opting to add to the adventurous plot cybercrimes, betrayals, and conspiracies that push the narrative toward espionage thriller.
Mars is the declared objective, but something – and someone – hides aboard the spacecraft. Discovering what it is becomes one of the book’s main engines, as readers enter the complex dynamics of those who chose to leave Earth for good.
An Adventure, No Heroine
In all this, Robinson chooses to follow multiple viewpoints, with two protagonists who stand out above the rest. On one side is Alyssa, an astronaut ready to do anything to crown her dream, who finds herself, once again, grounded, a step from the finish line. On the other is Jia, a girl from Hong Kong who pursues clues around the world after the disappearance of her brother Kai, a brilliant programmer who vanished into thin air and left her only a cryptic video message…
They are not flawless heroines, not Lara Croft from video games or similar characters, but two women who find themselves inside something bigger than themselves and try to save themselves, and save those they love. Their adventures alternate chapter after chapter, giving readers the chance to grasp the plan’s complexity and the implications of this extraordinary journey.
Between TV-Series Action and Deep Themes
The pace is relentless, the twists are plentiful. For this reason, at times, reading it feels like facing a TV series. And perhaps it’s no accident. It is the author herself (who has worked on programs such as Fortitude, Electric Girls and A Thousand Blows), in an interview, who declared that she had proposed an initial draft of Mars One as a television series, only to adapt it to a novel years later.
Action, intrigue, fast-paced chapters. Robinson builds a narrative perfect for those who love high-intensity books, and the serial thrillers that glance at what could happen in the coming years. Not to mention that the work enriches with little pop-culture nods and references, including Men in Black, cited precisely in Kai’s message to Jia.
If the English publisher has linked Mars One to the well-known The Martian by Andy Weir and Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, the themes tackled recall—with a very different voice—Deborah Willis’s My Girl on Mars: from the geopolitical interests of eccentric billionaires to climate change… The two protagonists are the filter through which Charlotte Robinson tells current affairs and the weight that each of us carries on our shoulders, as the world seems to fall apart.
