"Midnight on Mars" by M.C. Glan - The Many Faces of Fear

M.C. Glan's Fading Humanity

The idea that one day we'll be forced to leave Earth and look for a shelter elsewhere is certainly not without foundation.

With each and every second we are further exhausting the non-renewable resources that make our civilization turn round, and even if we manage to move on to completely recyclable energy and solve all the critical worldly issues (such as hunger and diseases), we'll still have to deal with a dying sun.

In other words, whether it takes two thousand or two billion years, one day we'll have to leave this planet of ours if we want to survive. M.C. Glan is an author who decided to play on that aspect in her first published effort, the novella Midnight on Mars.

To give you a brief idea of what the story is all about, we have our main character, Kari Keskiyo, who had the great fortune of winning a ticket allowing her to leave the fading Earth to live on the peaceful Martian colony humanity has established there. It really doesn't take long for things to take a nosedive for the worst, as she meets her ex-fiance, Neil Blackwell.

The problem consists of the fact that Neil had an ambitious project which got secretly greenlit in a time of desperation, and the ultimate product was the unwitting creation of an army of killer clones referred to as the Hollows. They have mostly taken over Mars, and the surviving humans are far and few in-between.

And thus, Kari and Neil, bound by destiny once again, set it out in search of survivors, all while trying to save not only themselves, but humanity as a whole... for if the colony falls, those remaining on Earth will have nowhere left to go before Armageddon.

Zombies on Mars

Now while I am aware that in technical of terms these Hollows aren't exactly zombies, I still think it's an accurate way to describe them, especially when considering how this book ought to be qualified.

They are frantic, mindless and enraged beings whose only purpose is to kill without a thought; they cannot be reasoned with or anything else for that matter. In the same breath, I also want to make it clear that while the Hollows are indeed the main source of conflict, they serve more as a propulsion system to push the main characters onto their perilous path of self-discovery.

There is a whole lot of action from one page to the next, and even the very beginning itself wastes absolutely no time dragging us into the eye of the hurricane.

Chaos greets us straight away as we land with Kari on Mars and from that point on the action is quite relentless, with a few moments allowing us to catch our breath here and there.

Considering the book itself is barely 90 pages long, this kind of pace is not only acceptable, but also very much welcome. After all, Glan creates a compelling setting with a back-story that begs to be developed further, and it's important to touch on as much ground as possible with the limited time that we have.

An Intellectual Exercise

While a good part of the book is about how Kari and Neil will manage to evade the deadly Hollows around them and restore some kind of order to the colony, the author certainly wasn't afraid of delving into the realms of philosophy.

As we follow our protagonists through their perils we also see them ponder on a number of different topics, all stemming from that one question most of us probably won't get a definitive answer to: what is the meaning of life?

The author does interject some of her religious beliefs into the story, but rest assured that they don't feel forced or too closely-adhered to. There is just enough to raise questions and push to draw our own conclusions.

Unfortunately, it feels like the author more or less ran out of space and was forced to condense some of the thoughts and deliberations the characters went through... as a matter of fact, it feels like the characters themselves have suffered this fate in terms of their development.

While the length of the book made for a faster and more action-packed story, the people populating it were given a back seat, most of them just feeling underdeveloped, which in turn hampers our ability to care for them.

In the same breath, I feel like I have to mention that there are places where the dialogue feels a bit stiff and wooden... however, I do want to stress that dialogue is one of the hardest things to write, and for a first book it definitely wasn't horrible or unreadable... it just felt unrealistic at times, being quite decent on the whole.

The Final Verdict

All in all, for a first publishing effort Midnight on Mars is definitely something to be proud of. While it does have its few faults here and there, on the whole it offers a compelling story written with style that takes place in a setting which we get to view from a slightly different angle than usual.

At just below 90 pages in length, it's a book I feel I must recommend to science-fiction fans who are on the lookout for promising up-and-coming authors such as M.C. Glan.

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M.C. Glan M.C. Glan is a Canadian writer who has only recently begun her foray into the realms of literature, having published the short story Midnight on Mars and The Summoner, the first book in The Temble Of Souls Saga. So far she has decided to stay within the genre of science-fiction where her works have attained some deserved recognition.