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Red planet blues

Robert J. Sawyer

356 pages

A gritty, hardboiled detective story wrapped in the dusty desperation of a lawless extraterrestrial gold rush.

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What it feels like

This novel offers a seamless fusion of classic hardboiled detective fiction and high-tech speculative world-building, dropping the reader into a dusty, lawless frontier where desperation hangs heavy in the air. The mood is distinctly gritty and cynical, capturing the weary reality of a boomtown populated by failed prospectors, corrupt authorities, and those who have bought their way into artificial immortality. As the narrative unfolds, the pace quickens from a steady, atmospheric crawl through mean streets into a brisk, high-stakes hunt for buried secrets and legendary treasures. The prose balances thought-provoking sci-fi concepts with the sharp, world-weary edge of traditional noir. It is a perfect fit for readers who crave morally gray mysteries set against the harsh, unforgiving backdrop of an alien gold rush.

Mood
  • dusty
  • shadowy
  • lawless
  • desperate
Tone
  • cynical
  • gritty
  • hardboiled
  • thought-provoking
Pace
brisk
Themes
the corrupting nature of greed · frontier desperation · the search for authenticity in a synthetic world · mortality and artificial immortality
The writing
The prose blends the sharp, hardboiled cadence of classic detective fiction with the speculative world-building of high-tech sci-fi.
The arc
The reader is pulled from the weary cynicism of a dead-end frontier into the escalating tension of a high-stakes, historical treasure hunt.
Who it's for
Readers who love the gritty, morally gray atmosphere of classic noir transplanted into a dusty, high-tech extraterrestrial frontier.
Content notes
  • murder
  • kidnapping
  • police corruption
  • violence

About the book

"Robert J. Sawyer, the author of such "revelatory and thought-provoking"* novels as Triggers and The WWW Trilogy, presents a noir mystery expanded from his Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novella "Identity Theft" and his Aurora Award-winning short story "Biding Time," and set on a lawless Mars in a future where everything is cheap, and life is even cheaper... Alex Lomax is the one and only private eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that sprang up forty years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O'Reilly discovered fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized, the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded to Mars in the Great Martian Fossil Rush. Trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest world, Lomax tracks down killers and kidnappers among the failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and a growing population of transfers--lucky stiffs who, after striking paleontological gold, upload their minds into immortal android bodies. But when he uncovers clues to solving the decades-old murders of Weingarten and O'Reilly, along with a journal that may lead to their legendary mother lode of Martian fossils, God only knows what he'll dig up... "The Globe and Mail."

Description from Open Library.

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