Colony One Mars by Gerald M. Kilby

Colony One Mars by Gerald M. Kilby

There is something about stories that focus on colonizing the solar system that always excite me. Mars has been an interest of mine since I first picked up Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars and I’ve enjoyed a wide range of other Mars-based stories over the years from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, to Ian Douglas’ Semper Mars, to more recently, S.J. Morden’s One Way. Gerald Kilby’s Colony One Mars has a lot in common with the best of these tales. There’s a mystery at the heart of the story, serious threats to the survival of the astronauts, and some decent characterization to ground the story around people we quickly come to like.

 

The mystery is what happened to the previous colony—that is, the Colony One of the title. A private corporation (COM) had set up the colony and then in one of Mars horrendous sandstorms, all contact was lost and everyone was presumed dead. Except, maybe they aren’t all dead and the colony infrastructure is not in nearly as bad a shape as the astronauts expected.

 

The astronauts, by the way, are not part of COM—except for one unidentified traitor whom we learn early on is actually on COM’s payroll as a double agent. So, the astronauts don’t know that the colony was actually set up to run illegal experiments on humans. This is unfortunate, because the results of those experiments still exist in the colony and cause much of the drama in the book. One of the astronauts is quickly infected with something and the results are…bad.

 

Overall, this is a tense story about survival that I enjoyed very much. I do have a couple of quibbles. The main character, Jann, is constantly referred to as undertrained for the mission with some astronauts outright saying she doesn’t belong. I thought this was both unrealistic and unnecessary. Why on earth send an untrained person to Mars? There would have been plenty of backup people ready to fill in if a slot unexpectedly opened due to illness or accident.

 

Also, Jann especially, doesn’t think about communications very much and it’s unrealistic. She’s attacked by the infected crewmember and just runs away never thinking to warn people about what she’s just experienced. And when she does finally reach the others, they choose to believe that she is the one having the break down, not the person who was made ill during the search of Colony One. I just didn’t think that made sense, but once we get past that part of the story, things pick up nicely again.