Straight away, from the cover, we can perhaps see who this book is aimed at attracting. A lone figure in a space suit, in a red (well, orange, really) sandstorm. From the start, the presence of the unexpected bestseller The Martian looms large here. I can see this one in the bookshop with a promotional blurb, “For those who are wondering what to read after The Martian…”
Which is a tad unfair, but I’ll explain more in a moment.
From the publisher: “There’s a murderer amongst them, and everyone’s a suspect . . .
Frank Kittridge is serving life for murdering his son’s drug dealer, so when he’s offered a deal by Xenosystems Operations – the corporation that owns the prison – he takes it.
He’s been selected to help build the first permanent base on Mars. Unfortunately, his crewmates are just as guilty of their crimes as he is.
As the convicts set to work on the frozen wastes of Mars, the accidents multiply.
Until Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all . . .”
So: let’s deal with the elephant in the room straight away. At a basic level, then there are similarities between this and The Martian, admittedly. Yes, it’s set on Mars, and, like The Martian, is a story of solving a series of puzzles over extreme conditions and adversity – there are no rescue services available, so far from home, etc etc.
And yet, despite this, One Way is its own story. Once you get past the generic setting, it is actually more of a murder mystery in that most beloved of crime drama settings, the ‘locked-room mystery’, although here the ‘locked room’ is a planet the protagonists can’t leave, or a self-built module on that planet. The murderer has no escape, unless they wish to wander off into the Martian landscape…
Whereas in a traditional crime drama we’d have the policeman, the inspector, the vicar, the voluptuous femme fatale et al, all in the library of a country house, here we have , amongst others, the grumpy old woman, the person of colour, a reformed neo-Nazi that has found religion, the too-young and inexperienced geek, the teen sociopath and just one person left in charge of them all (yes, I know….another weak plot point, in my opinion!)
As our narrator, Franklin (Frank) Kittridge is set up as the ‘good guy’ of the story (even though he killed his son’s drug dealer), determined to see the demanding situation through. Some of the other characters grow on the reader too, whilst others I found a little whiny. The deliberately unpleasant jailer, Brack, the tough disciplinarian given the task of beating these miscreants into shape, was unsubtle and lacked finesse. There’s a lot of pseudo-technical detail given to give the setting some element of gravitas, and I am sure that Dr Morden has used his technical know-how as a scientist to make this work. Behind it all, of course, we have big corporate business shenanigans worthy of NASA or an Elon Musk-type business setup, where the emphasis is on profit over expense, which leads to situations that are rather silly.
Like a murder in a country manor, what is engaging here are the deliberately diverse bunch of misfits given the task of setting up a basic outpost on Mars before the real pioneers arrive. (Yes, the initial premise of sending convicts to do the work is a tad far-fetched, to say the least, but it is quickly glossed over.) Personally, I would have thought that such a mix of sociopaths, murderers and control-freaks would have been asking for trouble, but the plot tells us that the psychologists have checked them all out for their compatibility, so its OK. (Potential weak plot point…. ) I’ve seen Escape from New York enough to know that difficult times create desperate men (or women).
If this was a Hollywood movie, then the unwritten rules would dictate that, by the end, though they all start with their own individual motives, by working together they survive, forming the foundation for a future colony. This is not that movie, although once we get to Mars the pace picks up a little and I enjoyed reading of the challenges that the ‘chain-gang of Mars’ face (traversing the landscape, limited air supply and food, reduced gravity and so on.)
I found this problem-solving aspect to be more engaging than the characterisation. In terms of characterisation, there’s not too much detail given of the characters or their motivations, just enough to make the situation understandable. As expected, they all have their own reasons to kill, one being, of course, that they’re all in prison for doing something VERY BAD. This is rather like the Agatha Christie template the book is following, which rarely get beyond the stereotypes. We’re not here to get a detailed analysis of the characters, the plot is the thing. And as the lists of suspects gets smaller, as readers we try work out the mystery and see who is to blame.
My biggest issue with the set-up is whether relatively untrained people, all of whom have been locked up for BAD THINGS and who have barely communicated with others outside their respective cells in that time, can be trusted to get on with each other and get the job done. Real astronauts spend years being assessed psychologically for compatibility as well as physically and mentally before being trusted on a mission – who would risk those billions of dollars on such unpredictable variables, especially when profit seems to be a main motive? To be fair, the book tries to explain these issues, but to me the justification rang false, despite the protestations of the author.
As the characters start to be bumped off, more basic problems occur – how will this outpost survive with reduced workers, when everything, including the environment, is against them? There is also the issue that, as the people are killed one by one, the situation becomes less realistic and more unbelievable. Practically, and unlike in a country manor, rather than by one death at a time it would be far simpler to kill everyone not needed in one fell swoop by opening a spacesuit or a habitat to Mars once the work was done.
In the end, One Way is an admirable attempt to mix up genres, and play around with aspects of both the crime novel and s-f. However, it’s not perfect and runs the risk of not satisfying either fan. Sometimes the experiment highlights the weaknesses of both genres rather than the highpoints it tries hard to emulate. Whilst the story is written well, it is built on some dodgy notions that undermine the overall effect.
Like that other book, I can see One Way being accessible to those who don’t normally read science-fiction, but all its limitations pointed out by those that do. I enjoyed most of it, but there are issues which can make or break this one for the reader, I feel.
One Way by S J Morden
Published by Gollancz: ecopy April 2018, paperback August 2018
ISBN: 978-1473222571
304 pages
Review by Mark Yon
Who are the characters/convicts and what’s their deal?
Hi Ryan. Lets see… As well as Frank Kittridge, there’s his gaoler Brack. Declan is Frank’s second in command. There’s Dr. Alice Shepherd, a grey-haired scientist and the medical doctor of the group. Zero is a young black man in charge of farming. There’s also Zeus, who looks like a neo-Nazi who used to work on oil-rigs. By contrast, Marcy Cole is a young lady of colour, whose job is transport driver and trainer. Dee-dee is a young computer nerd with a nervous stutter. Think that’s the main characters.
All have different reasons for being there, but to say more would spoil the plot!