Retrograde

AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR

Venturing into space and travelling to Mars sounds like an exotic adventure, but the reality is living in lava caves hundreds of feet below the surface of a rocky, frozen, lifeless planet is exacting on the Mars Endeavour crew. The only viable option for long term habitation lies beneath the surface of the planet, where humans can be shielded from harsh cosmic radiation.

Connor, Harrison, and Liz are senior members of the US module. When war breaks out on Earth, and rumours begin spreading on Mars, they find their core principles rocked by the devastation and loss of friends and family. Who can you trust on an international mission when your countries are at war? As the colonists struggle to figure out what really happened on Earth, grief and anger become pitted against camaraderie and the spirit of exploration.

Book Features:

• All too often, characteriSation takes a backseat in science fiction, with grand ideas taking center stage, but in Mars Endeavour, we experience everyday life on the fourth planet from the sun, watching as astronauts, engineers, doctors, and scientists go about life on another planet.
• Mars Endeavour is grounded in the latest scientific knowledge about the Red Planet, its origins, geological history, and the physics of life on another world; it’s so grounded, in fact, Dr. Andrew Rader (an aerospace engineer with a PhD in human spaceflight from MIT) provides an afterword to the book in which he speaks about its scientific plausibility.
• The Endeavour colony is divided into four modules, housing the US, Russian, Chinese, and Eurasian contingents, with the Eurasians being comprised of nations from the United Kingdom to Japan, giving Mars Endeavour a broad international appeal.
• It's been half a century since humanity walked on the Moon, and still we’re physically no closer to landing on Mars. In that time, though, the technology needed to survive in the hostile Martian atmosphere has been developed on the International Space Station. Weaving this into Mars Endeavour lends a degree of plausibility seldom seen in science fiction.

About the Author

Peter Cawdron is an Australian science fiction writer and author of numerous novels. He lives in Queensland, Australia.