Lester Del Rey 2 hr 58 min read

Exiled to Mars on a one-way ticket, ex-teacher Bruce Gordon steps off the bus into Marsport, a lawless, graft-ridden frontier city where a man must learn fast to survive.

Lester del Rey's 1956 novel is a gritty, hard-boiled colonization and social-SF tale of corruption and reform on Mars. Sharp, vivid golden-age SF. Read it for a tough, engrossing story of a man cast out to a wide-open Martian city, and the crooked politics he's swept into.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

2 hr 58 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).