Happy Monday, dear readers! The featured author series continues, this time with Landon Trine, author of First on Mars, another entrant in the Geek and Sundry hard sci-fi contest. This book sounds awesome; I highly recommend checking it out. Landon can be found on the web on Twitter (@landontrine) and Facebook.
About First on Mars:
A diverse group of seven NASA astronauts are chosen for the first crewed expedition to the red planet: Kurt, Norbite, Kara, Rin, Aditya, Anesh, and Akshara. For some unknown reason, Aditya tries to sabotage the ship and then kills himself, leaving a trail of frightening implications with no time to investigate. China has launched its own mission to Mars in an attempt to claim territory and other countries are not far behind. Events back on Earth and on Mars complicate and raise the stakes of their mission. The team needs to work together to survive the unforgiving surface of Mars, but a lack of honesty threatens to tear them apart.
In addition to the obvious space travel enabling technology this book touches on AI, life extension, bio-tech, nano-tech, augmented reality, robots, 3D printing, and other probable near-future advances. The general idea is optimistic, although of course a lot of stuff goes wrong.
Q: What part of your novel’s world excites you most?
A: The part that excites me the most is thinking about how the actual colonization of Mars might take place in the near future. A lot of science fiction either takes it for granted that Mars is colonized or just looks at one human Mars mission in which something goes wrong. I think there are a lot of potential stories between these two scenarios.
Q: Why did you choose to fund with Inkshares?
A: I love the idea of crowdfunding as a way of replacing or complementing the traditional barriers to entry. I also understand the benefit of having a publisher and Inkshares marries crowdfunding with a book publisher. I’m also really impressed with the community already at Inkshares. There are a lot of really interesting authors and books.
Q: What (if any) are some novels that are similar to yours?
A: I like to think that my story is completely original, but that’s not really true of any story. If I had to pick two novels that inspire First on Mars, I’d pick Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, and The Martian by Andy Weir. My story falls somewhere in between the two with the addition of recently discovered science and political situations.
