Desolation Road

Author: Ian Mcdonald

This is the closest modern science fiction has come to the haunting, magical sense of Mars as it appeared in The Martian Chronicles, and McDonald has mixed it with elements of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The result is a unique and enchanting novel. It's set in the Martian desert, where a small community called Desolation Road starts to gather. Over the course of a couple of centuries, we see the community as it grows, and through Desolation Road we see the transformation of Mars around it. It's a story of everyday loves and tensions within such a small, isolated settlement, but it's also the story of the technology that keeps the town together and that makes it part of the new world that is Mars. The image of the train is one of the most profound and memorable parts of this whole novel. Desolation Road was Ian McDonald's first novel, and all of the characteristics that we have come to recognise in his later books are found here: the large cast, the fluid relationships between characters, the sense that the future is not just, or not primarily, white and western. A sequel, Ares Express, takes the story forward and the two really should be read together.