The first human colony on Mars consisted of a number of habitats and 54 colonists. An intense, 6-month-long dust storm covered all the solar panels and destroyed much of the facility. After all contact was lost, and satellite imagery showed much of the facility destroyed, it took several years before a new mission could be launched to investigate what might have happened.

Six astronauts eventually landed nearby and started investigating. What they found was not quite what they expected. In particular, apparently there were survivors. Quickly, however, some of the crew members started getting ill, experienced psychotic episodes and started turning against each other.

Colony One Mars is the first book of a series of six books. I knew that when I picked it up. After reading, I now realize that it’s not really a book, but the first chapter of a long book of six chapters. There is no real resolution, no end, many questions remain unanswered, and yes, you want to pick up the next book. And I guess that is the point.

However, it is just not good enough a story that I want to spend more time on it. This book reminded me of The Object by Joshua T. Calvert, which I reviewed about a year ago, where I said this verbatim:

Without spoiling the book for you, I just have to add that it’s always baffling when there is a space mission where Earth selects its best and brightest to go to meet an alien vessel, and those brilliant super astronauts do really, really stupid things once they are out there on their own. Perhaps that makes for an exciting plot, but for me it’s just distracting. These people are idiots out there, and when I read the story, it does not draw me in. It loses me and I want it to just move on and be done.

The only difference is that the mission does not visit an alien vessel, it visits a derelict colony on Mars, but the mission participants are for the most part cardboard characters with no real personalities. There is a female Ph.D. biologist who is the protagonist. The mission commander and the first officer are both one-dimensional humans who seem to be built just for the simple plot of this book. The author really does not bother to build characters for the entire crew. They are just there to move things along.

There is a commercial faction on Earth who pulls the financial strings of the mission, called COM, which stands for “Colony One Mars.” There are board members who are pure evil, motivated only by money, who are the actual culprits and who use people as expendable pawns in their game of riches.

Interestingly, there is a character named Leon Maximus, who is introduced here:

Leon Maximus, on the other hand, Peter admired. He was motivated by a seemingly sincere desire to advance human civilization. To make it an interplanetary species. To establish a Planet B, as he liked to call it. He was a rare breed indeed. None of this would have been possible if it were not for him and his genius. His company had developed the rocket technology to get the first colonists to Mars. Still, it was a slow tedious process. It was an eight month trip and, with the way the planets orbited each other, a tight two year launch window.

Kilby, Gerald M.. Colony One Mars: Fast Paced Scifi Thriller (Colony Mars Series Book 1) (pp. 80-81). Outer Planet Media. Kindle Edition.

You can move the letters of Leon around and match them to a real person in our time who is obsessed with colonizing Mars.

There are a lot of raving reviews out there about this hard science fiction book and it being a page-turner. Well, I turned the pages all the way through, but it’s really a story that is very contrived and just not all that interesting. If you want a real Mars story, you need to read The Martian, by Andy Weir.

Colony One Mars is the first book of a series, but I won’t read the other five.