This collection of short fiction is an imagining of the impact — personal, interpersonal, psychological and existential — of our forthcoming colonisation of Mars. It interweaves threads of the isolation, loss and alienation of living on inhospitable Mars, if with a nascent love of its cold, harsh beauty, as humanity truly becomes a bi-planetary species.

Larry Buttrose is a poet, novelist, dramatist and journalist. His fiction includes the novels The Maze of the Muse, and Sweet Sentence. His nonfiction works include Dead Famous: Deaths of the Famous and Famous Deaths; Tales of the Popes; and the international bestseller A Long Way Home, adapted to the acclaimed film, Lion. He lives in Sydney.