This collection brings together 20 of the best science fiction stories about Mars published over the past two decades by top-notch authors of the genre.

 

• “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” by John Barnes — The rivalry between two documentarians, filming on Mars, puts them in peril as the planet is being terraformed.

• “Martian Heart” also by John Barnes — A colonist provides a moving account of his life on Mars to inspire a new generation of Martians.

• “Mars Abides” by Stephen Baxter — The first man to step foot on Mars recounts his life’s story as mankind ends its colonization of the planet.

• “The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini” by Chez Brenchley — A gravedigger uncovers many secrets at the burial of a hanged British nobleman on a Victorian Mars.

• “Hanging Gardens” by Gregory Feeley — Two young girls are desperate to survive on the surface of Mars after their commune’s underground compound is destroyed by comet strikes.

• “The Martian Job” by Jaine Fenn — The greatest heist known to humankind, with many a double-cross, is pulled on the largest corporation on Mars.

• “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars” by Ernest Hogan — A corporation building New Las Vegas on Mars grooms a janitor for rock stardom to improve worker morale.

• “The Vicar of Mars” by Gwyneth Jones — A High Priest suffers hauntings after visiting an old, reclusive, wealthy woman on Mars.

• “Falling onto Mars” by Geoffrey A. Landis — A penal colony on Mars violently clashes with a science base in this Hugo Award winning story.

• “The Monoliths of Mars” by Paul McAuley — Pilgrims, tourists, and locals visit the many monoliths of Mars to commune with their unknown builders through radio bursts.

• “Wyatt Earp 2.0” by Wil McCarthy — A rough and tumble Martian mining town reconstructs a lawman from the Old American West to restore order.

• “Digging” by Ian McDonald — A project has been undertaken to create a breathable atmosphere on Mars constructing a valley so deep that the planet’s thin atmosphere will be forced into it.

• “The Old Cosmonaut and the Construction Worker Dream of Mars” also by Ian McDonald — The lives of a young Indian construction worker and an old Estonian cosmonaut collide during the terraforming of Mars by quantum machines.

• “The Cascade” by Sean McMullen — an affair between a shy robotics postdoc and an adventurous young woman change the destiny of the first landing on Mars.

• “The Martian Obelisk” by Linda Nagata — A robotic crawler threatens the remote construction of a monument on Mars, by an architect on Earth, as it approaches the obelisk in this Locus Award winning story.

• “Martian Blood” by Allen M. Steele — An Egyptian-American astrobiologist travels to a Martian aboriginal settlement to prove his theory that life on Earth originated on Mars.

• “The Emperor of Mars” also by Allen M. Steele — A laborer on a corporate-owned Martian colony transforms himself into royalty while coping with a tragedy on Earth in this Hugo Award winning story.

• “Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar — An improbable group of astronauts are slingshot to Mars in cheap one-person, one-way jalopies.

• “How to Become a Mars Overlord” by Catherynne M. Valente — An amusing step-by-step program enables potential potentates to find the right Mars to rule over.

• “La Malcontenta” by Liz Williams — A young girl defies the conventional role she’s fated for on Mars.