Mjke Wood

In the wake of Andy Weir, Mars survival stories are once again in vogue. Mjke Wood’s Old Man in a Spacesuit offers an intriguing twist that almost works. Our protagonist, Harry, is a 68-year-old widower living in Utrecht when he receives a letter telling him has been chosen to attend crew training for a mission to Mars aboard the Aldrin, a newly launched ship designed to cycle between Earth and Mars orbits. Harry was once a successful science fiction writer, but since his wife died, he has suffered from increasing attacks of bipolar depression. He is pretty sure that he is the wrong guy to send to Mars. The idea, it turns out, is to send a crew of senior citizens on a one-way trip to establish a colony, which they eventually dub The Sunny Sands Retirement Home. Wood does a credible job of making his trip and crew believable, but he drops a couple of stitches. Harry is a science fiction writer who has supposedly won a Hugo, but he seems to have few connections in the SF community. He also soft-pedals the problems associated with growing food crops on Mars. Still, Harry and his Sunny Sands gang are fun to spend some time with. 3.5 stars.… (más)

I confess to being a sucker for books about unlikely nerds in space. Mjke Wood’s Deep Space Accountant fits that bill nicely. Elton D. Philpotts has a numeracy gene. His father thought it would make him a good accountant. It doesn’t. It just makes him interested in numbers and able to remember long strings of them. But he scraped by accountancy training and needs to work as an accountant in deep space to earn the coveted letters that will make him a chartered relativistic accountant. A relativistic accountant seems mainly responsible for figuring out the proper depreciation for time-dilated equipment. But jumping through the economy wormhole gate headfirst is not the way he wanted to start his off-planet experience. 3.5 stars.… (más)

Old people are cheaper

The cash-strapped European Space Agency does some financial calculations and realizes that it would be cheaper to send voyagers to Mars if they don't bring them back, so they enlist old people for the journey. It makes a kind of cockeyed sense and so Harry Burton, a cranky, bipolar, widowed, science fiction author goes along with the scheme. Harry's been miserable since his wife died and the idea of one last adventure is very appealing.

The story is written in a Heinlein style – clear sentences, no complex emotions. Gender and racial tropes are updated but the story is a 1950s tech and brains overcomes all obstacles kind of thing. It was fun to read although I have a couple of questions for the author, the most important of which is why are there no spare oxygen tanks for each of the crew members? The story would be much different if there were a stack of scuba tanks in the rover.

I received a review copy of "Old Man in a Spacesuit" by Mjke Wood from Copperbird Press through NetGalley.com.… (más)