Doomed byoverpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-endingwar, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars representshumankind’s last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the redplanet’s surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home worldare attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corruptinginfluences of politics, art, and religion. Unable ever to return, thesepioneers have chosen an unalterable path that winds through a landscapeas terrible as it is beautiful, often forcing them to compromise theirbeliefs—and sometimes their humanity—in order to survive.Butthe gravest threat to the future is not the settlement’s totaldependence on foodstuffs sent from a distant and increasingly uncaringEarth, or the events that occur in the aftermath of the miraculousdiscovery of native life on Mars—it is the fact that in the ten yearssince colonization began, every new human baby has been born dead, or sotragically deformed that death comes within hours.