Red Dust: A Path Through China

The revival of interest by NASA in sending missions to Mars in the early 1990s kickstarted a revival of interest in the planet as a setting for science fiction, with novels like Red Mars and Moving Mars appearing at roughly the same time. Also among that group was Red Dust by Paul McAuley, but unusually, instead of imagining a Mars colonised by predominantly Western, usually American, efforts, he thought what would happen if the planet was colonised by communist China. The story of an American having to make his way across Mars while avoiding the Chinese rulers, brings in encounters with a host of advanced technologies, including nanotech, biotech and virtual realities.   Red Dust is essentially an updated planetary romance, paying attention to our increased knowledge of the planet but without letting that get in the way of a fast-paced frontier adventure.