by Kate GreeneOnce Upon a Time I Lived On Mars

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth KATE GREENE

Kate Greene’s insightful, nuanced writing is the dose of perspective we so desperately need right now. Once Upon A Time I Lived on Mars is a book about the wonders of space, but even more so, it’s a triumphant account of what it means to be a thoughtful, messy, and ultimately hopeful human right here on spaceship Earth – Juli Berwald, author of SPINELESS

Observations and insights on space exploration, as inspired by the author’s experience of living in a simulated Martian environment on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

When it comes to colonizing Mars, so often we focus on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. Yet once we arrive, what will it actually be like?

In 2013, Kate Greene came one step closer to finding out. Along with five fellow crew members, she was chosen for NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For the next four months she lived, worked and slept in an isolated white dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates but also gaining incredible insight into human behaviour in tight quarters, as well as the nature of the boredom, dreams, isolation and irritation that arise despite the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS, Greene uses her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore and asks: what kind of wisdom will we take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe? It is an examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.

KATE GREENE is an essayist, journalist and former laser physicist whose work has appeared in Aeon, Discover, Harvard Review, the New Yorker, Pacific Standard, Slate, the Economist and Wired, among others. She holds a BS in chemistry and an MS in physics. The co-author with Nathan Eagle of REALITY MINING: Using Big Data to Engineer a Better World (MIT Press, 2014), she lives in New York City.

Agent: Tisse Takagi

Publisher: St Martin’s Press (US)/Icon (UK) Publication: 14 July 2020 Length: 240 pages

All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Icon), US & Canada (St Martin’s Press), China (Ginkgo (Beijing) Book Co. Ltd)