Teens on Mars
The thing about getting rid of books is that sometimes they catch your interest on the way out the door. I stopped and read Red Planet Run by Dana Stabenow. S/he wrote in a fun style to read aloud. I like to read dialogue aloud to myself anyway, and the mom protagonist spoke in tones much as I would use, though with more expletives. The other characters were the woman’s twin teenagers, a boy and a girl age 16, and a variety of adults. They left their home in the asteroid belt to explore Mars. Of course they crash landed and spent some months wandering, figuring out where they were in relation to where they would like to be, meeting more people than they expected. Most people befriended them, but one group tried murder and almost succeeded. Naturally the book ended with ancient artifacts discovered, along with breathable atmosphere and ancient technology still functioning; bad guys violently dead and good guys rescued. After you’ve read enough 20th century science fiction you can guess the overarching plot.
What kept me reading were the inner thoughts and relationships of the three main people. I’m a single mother of teenagers. I struggle to get them to clean up after themselves. We struggle to keep good relationships as they’re becoming independent adults. The characters did, too. They chose to stick together, albeit not because the teens wanted to be there. The teens wanted to stay in the asteroid belt, where they knew people and knew the environment. They understood that people lived on planets, but their only experience was of walking either on the outer shell or inside a hollowed out asteroid. They sulked until their mother took the time to listen to them and answer their questions. Until she showed she cared what they thought, they weren’t going to give more effort than the bare minimum for survival.
What woke her up, was finding the corpses of a colony that had been intentionally destroyed by an outside group of people. I hope never to have that impetus! I hope to be more aware of my family members, before we have to defend ourselves, before we have to bury and rebuild.
To that end, I’m sitting at the table next to my child. We’re both on computers, reading different things, taking turns listening to music and videos. We’re not doing the same thing, but we’re together. We have different interests, but neither of us is dismissive of the other’s likes and dislikes. We’re making an effort to understand each other. A good way to spend Independence Day, building community.
