The Empress of Mars by Kage BakerThe Empress of Mars (The Company) by Kage Baker

Mars is one of the most iconic and revisited settings in all of science fiction, both as a place of past alien civilizations and future colonization for futuristic frontier stories. In Empress of Mars, Baker takes that second route as Mars is still an open planet ripe for pioneers to settle. Overseeing the colonization efforts is a very looming authority: the British Aerean Company (BAC). Unfortunately, the success the BAC had in colonizing the Moon didn’t turn out so well on Mars leaving the populace on the fringes and quite that evoked the Dustbowl situation in the American West in the 1930s.

At the center of the story is Mary Griffith, proprietor of the Empress of Mars, the only bar on the red planet. By strange hands of fate, she comes into possession of an extraordinarily large diamond which could set her comfortably for the rest of her life. Mary is a very matriarchal figure, she strong-willed, smart and has a number of daughters. She signed on to the BAC’s too-good-to-be true deal to help terra form Mars, but things didn’t work out so well. Unable to return to Earth, Mary used her skills and knowledge as a xenobiologist to brew beer and open the Empress.

via The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker – Official sffworld.com review.

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