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Redlands
'There is no death out here... there is no mercy...' The Shining meets 2001 in this taut, psychological thriller. An archaeological discovery in a remote African cave has seismic implications on the origins of man and becomes the catalyst to a manned mission to Mars. But when the crew finally enters the orbit of the mysterious Red Planet a journey of hope and discovery soon dissolves into one of terror and despair. Are the crew simply descending into madness brought on by the crushing isolation of deep space, or are more sinister and cosmic forces at work?
172 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 4, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 7, 2025
Pure coincidence, maybe, but French sci-fi TV series 'Missions' (aired 2017) has many similarities to this book (published 2018?).
Race to Mars: ✔
First mission spacecraft from Earth arrives at Mars & becomes victim of unknown disaster ✔
Second mission spacecraft from Earth arrives in Mars orbit ✔
Astronaut has vivid dreams about Mars, like memories ✔
Warning message picked up from first ship ✔
Weird force field barrier around Mars ✔
Astronaut who apparently died in Earth re-entry in the 1960s turns up alive & kicking, decades later on Mars, his craft having fallen through the anomaly in Earth's atmosphere ✔
Anomaly that's actually a time portal between Mars & Earth ✔
Evidence of a civilisation suggesting humanity from Mars actually kick-started humanity on Earth ✔
The only difference is in 'Missions' Martians DID bring humanity to Earth, & the astronaut falling through the anomaly above Earth went to Mars in the future, whilst in 'Redlands', humanity was kick-started by one of the astronauts going through the time portal and emerging in Earth millions of years in the past & reproducing with the early 'locals'!
As I said, probably a coincidence, but if you want a good storytelling version, watch Missions instead of reading this book. This author is NOT a good storyteller OR writer.The prose is clunky, the characters one-dimensional, the dialogue contrived, and the sheer number of punctuation errors, which affect HOW you read the text, is laughable, creating many misinterpretations that needed you to keep going back & re-reading whilst mentally inserting the absent punctuation to make sense.
Dire!
Race to Mars: ✔
First mission spacecraft from Earth arrives at Mars & becomes victim of unknown disaster ✔
Second mission spacecraft from Earth arrives in Mars orbit ✔
Astronaut has vivid dreams about Mars, like memories ✔
Warning message picked up from first ship ✔
Weird force field barrier around Mars ✔
Astronaut who apparently died in Earth re-entry in the 1960s turns up alive & kicking, decades later on Mars, his craft having fallen through the anomaly in Earth's atmosphere ✔
Anomaly that's actually a time portal between Mars & Earth ✔
Evidence of a civilisation suggesting humanity from Mars actually kick-started humanity on Earth ✔
The only difference is in 'Missions' Martians DID bring humanity to Earth, & the astronaut falling through the anomaly above Earth went to Mars in the future, whilst in 'Redlands', humanity was kick-started by one of the astronauts going through the time portal and emerging in Earth millions of years in the past & reproducing with the early 'locals'!
As I said, probably a coincidence, but if you want a good storytelling version, watch Missions instead of reading this book. This author is NOT a good storyteller OR writer.The prose is clunky, the characters one-dimensional, the dialogue contrived, and the sheer number of punctuation errors, which affect HOW you read the text, is laughable, creating many misinterpretations that needed you to keep going back & re-reading whilst mentally inserting the absent punctuation to make sense.
Dire!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2023
Well written and deftly paced. Redlands begins as a love letter to space travel but effortlessly morphs into a taut psychological sci-fi adventure story which keeps you turning the pages all the way to it’s earth shattering ending.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews