The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World

by Sarah Stewart Johnson

Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum--on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science.

In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.

Johnson's fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth's most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey--as a female scientist and a mother--with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings.

Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Space, Memoir, Audiobook, History, Astronomy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2020

About the author

Sarah Stewart Johnson is an assistant professor of planetary science at Georgetown University. A former Rhodes Scholar and White House Fellow, she received her PhD from MIT and has worked on NASA’s Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers. She is also a visiting scientist with the Planetary Environments Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Reviews

[Yun · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of looking for life in the universe began to make sense to me... a chance to discover the smallest breath in the deepest night and, in doing so, vanquish the void that lurked between human existence and all else in the cosmos.

In honor of Perseverance landing on Mars, of course I had to pick up a book about the red planet. And I'm so glad I chose The Sirens of Mars. In haunting and lyrical prose, Johnson provides both a straightforward account of the history of Mars space exploration, as well as a memoir of her journey to becoming the planetary scientist that she is today. In doing so, she also puts forth an examination of what constitutes life, and our very human urge to shed our isolation and find it beyond our planet.

My favorite parts of this book are around the Mars space exploration, which is the majority of the book. We are taken from the early days of astronomers peering at the bright red orb in the sky all the way through to NASA's most recent Mars missions. I found Johnson's narrative in these parts to be clear and easy to understand for the layman, even though this is a scientific topic. It was great fun and absolutely fascinating to read about all the logistical challenges of trying to do even simple things far away, and the ingenuity and tireless work that went into making these missions a success.

While I had previously known about the missions in passing, it was eye-opening to see them through the lens of searching for life. In particular, I never considered the crucial question of how someone would go about recognizing alien life. I always imagined, when meeting life from another planet, that it'll be somewhat like E.T., a clearly visible alien entity. I never considered that it could be infinitesimal microbes hanging in suspended animation hiding in the most inhospitable environments on Mars. It completely changed my way of thinking, and made me realize how difficult this seemingly obvious task really is.

Where I felt the book was a little more uneven is when it centered around Johnson's own experiences and musings. On the one hand, it was inspiring to read about her journey through this challenging field. And her evocative prose served to heighten her reflections around life and our place in the universe. On the other hand, at times, her prose turned meandering and excessively ponderous. And some of the technical jargon when she talks about her personal experiences, especially regarding geology, were hard to follow. But this is just a few pages here and there, and it didn't take too much away from an otherwise beautiful and easy-to-understand narrative.

One thing this book could have used are some illustrations and photos to go with the events described. As it stands, I did have to frequently look up images so that I could fully visualize a lot of the things that were talked about in here.

I'm not sure how I missed this book when it was published last year, since I always have my eyes peeled for books on space exploration. But I'm so happy to have finally noticed this book, especially during such an exciting time for Mars exploration. Now that I'm all caught up on the previous missions and also on what Perseverance is trying to accomplish, I'll be able to follow the current mission in more detail over the next few years, and cheer on its successes with better understanding.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a GR friend's review of this and got it at once. Sarah Stewart Johnson has written a combination autobiography with a focus on her career as a planetary scientist, a history of Mars exploration starting from early astronomers looking up at the sky and taking us through successive inventions and developments in planetary science and weaves in her personal life and career trajectory.

She writes about many different people that advanced the science, including Giovanni Schiaparelli, who in addition to advancing science gave some features on Mars their lovely names taken from Greek mythology, history and the Bible. And of course she focuses on her profession and passion: the search for life on Mars. It's more comprehensive than it seems while reading it and made enjoyable by her ability to include a lot of information in a flowing narrative written for a lay person.

My favorite parts took place at Jet Propulsion Labs as she observed then worked in mission control. It's exciting being in the room for launches and landings and deployments of rovers. It's something you won't find in a textbook about Mars. She describes technical details as well as the camaraderie of the scientists and engineers, the shared enthusiasm and disappointments and practical jokes among these people who work so closely and intensely in close quarters. You also won't find a textbook in which the author misses an important touchdown because she's about to give birth. She's not heavy-handed writing about juggling marriage and children with a career that has her away for long periods. It's seamless and relevant.

From time to time and especially at the end she brings in the arts, philosophy and more. She describes her excitement reading a short story by Voltaire, "Micromegas," in which a 120,000-foot alien from Sirius visits earth and for a while can't see any life because he's so far off. When he does, using his instruments, he sees a boatload of philosophers, picks them up gingerly and has a wonderfully satirical conversation with them.

It was a clever way for Stewart Johnson to reinforce how successive missions have gotten closer in and further afield on Mars. Missions get there faster, explore more territory, collect more types of samples and send back more data and photos with greater resolution. The Voltaire story ties in well and her enthusiasm for it led me to read the story, my first work by Voltaire. I didn't expect to find Voltaire in an autobiography focusing on Mars exploration and it's a great takeaway. This is a book that flows well, informs and entertains. I enjoyed it throughout.

[Numidica · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book about the beauty of science, and in particular about the search for life beyond Earth. Sarah Johnson's account of the search for life on Mars is a comprehensive description of mankind's interest in, and theories about Mars since ancient times, but it focuses on the last 150 years or so. It is interesting to remember how little we knew about the red planet until the first fly-by of Mars in 1965; it was not even known before then that Mars had craters on its surface. The general belief before that first Mariner mission in 1965 was that it was a desert planet, but with an Earth-like atmosphere. As a child, I watched Twilight Zone episodes and read Ray Bradbury stories that imagined such a world: Arizona with a red tint, probably including strange desert creatures and vegetation. The book tells the story of Lyndon Johnson sighing with disappointment when he was presented with the very first clear photos of the Martian surface by NASA, and acknowledging sadly that it was more like the moon than the extraterrestrial Arizona they all had imagined.

The tale of the AH84001 meteorite which was blasted off the surface of Mars by the impact of a much larger object on Mars, and ultimately landed in Antarctica is a good representation of how the scientific method works, and how "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof". The images of possible fossilized bacteria seen in the meteorite is intriguing even if scientists could never quite positively establish whether those were indeed fossilized bacteria revealed by the electron microscope. A substantial portion of the book focuses on the series of probes, landers, and rovers we have sent to Mars since 1965, and what they have found. And what scientists have found is that there were definitely areas of Mars with flowing water, perhaps for a billion years, and that at least in some places, there were all the necessary molecules and conditions for life to emerge, possibly enduring even until today. It's an exciting, interesting story, and Sarah's personal journey with JPL, academia, and her family makes it an engaging read; her many cultural references from Voltaire and Swift to Aristotle and Euclid are well integrated into the story and bring context to the human need to explore and to understand. She makes clear what an inhospitable place the surface of Mars is today, with no magnetosphere to stop cosmic radiation, as Earth's protective magnetic field does, and virtually no atmosphere. I knew that beforehand, but her articulation of the conditions is a good antidote to optimistic thoughts about colonizing Mars. After all, what fun is it to live underground for life, which is what would be required to protect colonists against the cosmic energy bombarding Mars 24/7. And, fun fact: the sky on Mars is yellow, but sometimes looks blue just at sunset.

I highly recommend this to anyone who has even a passing interest in space exploration or science.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of Mars

While the book is compact and fact-based, the author Sarah Stewart Johnson also captures the romantic fascination the people of earth have always felt for Mars in 'The Sirens of Mars'. She describes how the surface of Mars in early telescopes stirred many scientists into imagining the cities and canals and farms which must be there for Mars to look as it did. Many wonderful works of fiction are based on these early observations.

Science instruments of observation got better, but despite the increasing scientific clarity of what Mars truly is, the fascination has become only more intense. Johnson is a scientist, but she details what the Mars rovers have discovered without losing sight of the excitement and romance of Mars. Indeed, interest has grown even more.

Johnson writes in literary-quality prose for the general science reader. She has used her own autobiographical history appropriately, showing how her interest in math and Mars guided her own projectory forward towards a very interesting career in science. I recommend this book.

There is an extensive Notes section which definitely will aid the reader in further reading.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Just as there was a beginning of time, there was a beginning of life. And one day, there will be an end. We are unique and bounded, and we may well be in decline, for we know species come and go. We are a finite tribe in a temporary world, marching toward our end."

Almost sounds like the start of a dystopian type story but this is a wonderful look at how scientists are looking for life that might have existed on Mars. I learned so much in the book and loved learning it. The author, a planetary scientist describes how much we have learned about this planet, the one closest to us, thorough the most recent probes sent there and the history of its fascination as a possible lost civilization.

The writing is engrossing and just great fun to read. Did you know that Percival Lowell, heir to a textile fortune, in the 1890's convinced the world that a grand civilization once existed on Mars where once there had been plentiful water, evidenced by its canals. He saw a Mars that was quickly approaching a "dead" stage and this was a cautionary tale for our own Earth.

"It is perhaps not pleasing to learn the manner of our death. But science is concerned with only the fact and we have Mars to thank for its presentment."

Lowell was instrumental in setting up observatories so the Mars landscape could be viewed and mapped.

There is much good history here and information on the present search for life beyond our planet. I found it both fascinating and thoughtful and so well told.

A really wonderful read that took me out of the house to stare at the night skies and contemplate all we do might know and all that is left to learn and think about in planets both near and far. Highly, highly recommend.

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

When one thinks of life on Mars, those little green aliens tend to come up in the imagination. Loads of Science Fiction authors have written about it, be it Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy . More recently, movies have touched the Red Planet - many laughed with the puns in The Martia n and wondered about its science, others loved the Old Mars touch of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Princess of Mars even better.

With the upcoming NASA Mission "Mars 2020" featuring rover Perseverance, curiosity for Mars is given another notch, and this semi-fiction book is a very good preparation for it. It dives deep into the history of researching Mars starting with coarse views through bad lenses, via the fallacies of Martian channels, and focuses on the NASA missions since the 1960s. Every flyby gets a treatment, every rover is followed thoroughly.

The author manages it to present a red threat of scientific needs and curiosity starting from those early days, many setbacks and disappointments, up to the question why we are still sending new Missions there.

The only thing that I'm really missing is pictures. One can always go to external sources, of course, e.g. the wonderful space.com article, but I'd have preferred seeing them in the book.

It is a personal story, a story of the author's family, and one of herself, because she's been a scientist in three of those missions. Her story interleaves the non-fiction parts in an autobiographical point of view.

While she is no celebrity, her story is mostly interesting. Only very late in the book, when she starts talking about the birth of her child, I lost interest. That was also the time when she went far more into philosophical topics and ramblings about Euclidean mathematics.

The narration covers some 170 pages and is followed by a huge footnote section which I didn't digest but is expected from a scientist. The prose is absolutely accessible for normal readers, and it even builds up tension in the ever quest for microscopic life on Mars. No little green aliens are to be found here, but a wonderful scientific and autobiographical story of life on Mars, which I recommend for anyone interested in Martian affairs.

[David Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite books about science topics are always the ones that are written by scientists. This book, by Professor Sarah Johnson, is exceptionally well written. I didn't read this book--I listened to the audiobook. By listening to it, I heard a lyricism that is not often encountered in books about science. Well done!

This book is about the history of Mars exploration, with an emphasis on the search for life. The successes and failures of astronomers and modern space probes are described in a personal way. I really felt like I was reliving some of the stories about the modern space probes. The history is interleaved with memoirs of the author's life. Her early years were spent learning about geology and her later years participating in spacecraft studies of Mars. She also talks a bit about balancing science work and personal family life.

The book brings to life the excitement felt by the teams of scientists who built and ran the Mars probes. She describes the scenes so eloquently and sometimes gave me a shivering sensation. Highly recommended!

[Jaksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book from Goodreads Giveaway program. Thank you soooo much!

A wonderful, not-too-long book about Mars! And life on other planets! And life on Earth! And where it all comes from/came from, plus lots of ruminations on science, space exploration and life itself. Fascinating, one of those wish-it-were-longer books.

Ms. Johnson talks about her own life only sparingly - the subject here is Mars - but when she does, it fits seamlessly into her career, still young, and the science, history and exploration of the 'red planet.' (Yeah, I had to get that in there.) I taught science for 35 years and in most of that time astronomy was in the curriculum. (It got knocked into a different grade during my last few years of teaching. It was so hard to give away all those posters of planets and nebulae and the moon! I kept the Mars globe, though, as I bought it myself.) Anyhow, when I assigned the 'planet project,' which varied from year to year, Mars was a hot topic. Everyone wanted to 'do' Mars.

Back to the book: it's perfect; anyone can read and understand it, yet it's not a 'dumbed-down' tome for those who aren't scientists or science-oriented. It's factual, yet with a few theories thrown in here and there from those thinkers, scientists and explorers who came before us. Think the 'canals' on Mars, or 'dark patches,' and the findings from Viking 2 which were so enigmatic: life or not life? Biological process or chemical? And as for Life on Earth - all in caps - or 'Life as WE Know It,' what about Life as We DON'T Know it?' Over the last forty years or so I've followed in fascination all the 'unknown' little creatures being discovered in hot springs, in acidic ponds, in subzero temperatures in Antarctica, and at the deepest spots in the oceans. Hey, yeah, life seems extraordinarily flexible, adaptable, and as was said in some famous movie: 'Life will find a way.'

So a very readable, concise, precise and interesting book. I hope to read more of Ms. Johnson's ideas and speculations, as well as her observations about space, life, the future - and Mars in particular.

Five (dusty red) stars.

[Brahm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most frequently-used word on the dust jacket describing this book is "poetic". This is accurate.

Johnson has put together an incredible book that's totally unlike most of what I've read in space non-fiction to date. Judging a book by the cover, I was expecting something like a by-engineers, for-engineers autobiography, or perhaps a listicle-cum-book delving into the current state of Mars science.

What I got was something closer to Carl Sagan's iconic Cosmos: contemplative, exploring, curious, awe-filled, "lyrical" (quoting because I'm stealing this from two endorsements on the book jacket, but it's too great a word to omit), humble, personal, (soul) searching.

I tried and failed a couple times to summarize her approach to the story of Mars. It just didn't sound right, nor do I think the Goodreads description or the book jacket summary accurately capture the experience of this book.

I'll leave it at this: if you're the type of person who looks up at the night sky and experiences awe and wonder, or if you want to be that type of person, I'd recommend this book. A super-accessible read. One does not need to be a space geek to enjoy it, but space geeks will also enjoy it!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is at once educational, inspirational and poetic. Never thought that listening to a non-fiction story of search for signs of life on Mars could be so pleasurable and entertaining

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Louise Hulewsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ rounded down

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should start by saying there should be many more books like this--books by actual scientists recounting how especially complex collaborations, like spacecraft missions, work, written in their own words, and from a broader range of scientists who do not all come from the same background/life experiences (instead of your Carl Sagans dominating the publishing of popular science works).

However, this book did not really meet that. It might very well have been because I listened to the audiobook, but this is far from the first audiobook I've listened to with (or should have had) footnotes. I am working on getting my hands on a physical copy, and will update when I do (nothing like a pandemic to get in the way).

Some of the issues I had with the book were editorial--whoever on the book production team in charge of making sure jargon was explained did a really interesting job. Technical terms like "redshift", "rocker bogie" and "postdoc" were not explained, but there was a long description of how laser altimeters worked. There were also the now classic mistake of using "man" as an adjective and verb ("manned spacecraft" or "manning the controls") which has not been NASA style for a while now. There were also comments about field sites in the Mojave Desert or Western Australia being the edge of the world and desolate, which I'm sure the people whose traditional lands those are will be happy to hear followed by "and yes we'll return them to you".

This lack of precision also bothered me when it came to talking about women in science. While this is the strength of the book (particularly tracking Stewart Johnson's career), it also lead to the moment where I was about to stop listening to the audiobook. When talking about Maria Zuber's participation on Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), either the author (or Zuber herself; the lack of footnotes, an author's note about sources, or other additional information in audiobook made this difficult) or Zuber paraphrased the response to a journalist asking Zuber how it felt to be the only woman on the MGS science team:

"How could that be true? But as she [Zuber] quickly scrolled through the names on the team roster, it quickly became apparent that the reporter was right. She realized that she must have stopped noticing things like that a long time ago. She had trained her thoughts entirely on bigger problems, like how to map Mars with breathtaking resolution, how to transform planetary cartography." (my italics)

.

I would like to point out that given the numerous scientists Stewart Johnson included in the book, two (herself and Maria) identify as female. While that might work out statistically to reflect the total number of female planetary scientists, this is a problem. Workforce issues have been a key issue in planetary science for decades, to the point where the National Academies latest planetary science decadal survey (a once-every-10-years endeavor that sets the priorities for space sciences in the US) includes a specific call for community input for workforce issues. Minimizing this by saying mapping Mars is a "bigger problem" is dismissive of the larger problems in the planetary science community, not to mention diminishing the numerous times women have been harassed out of science during the types of field courses Stewart Johnson talks about being so valuable to her education. Or, removed from fields they essentially invented due to some sort of gender/workplace gentrification (for example, the ENIAC operators, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet).

Regardless of whether this was a direct quote, including this, plus a relatively limited set of planetary scientists (Stewart Johnson has worked with several heavy-hitters in the Mars geology community, but not all) and not mentioning the thousands of work- and orbiter-hours gone into things like landing site selection for the Mars 2020 rover, belies the actual amount of work that goes into rover missions before they even are launched. There's also the reinforcement early on of the "Great Man" theory of scientists, where you have to spend all your time in the lab, be ready to jump on a flight at any moment to the Jet Propulsion Lab, and then succeed that way. This works for some, but not for all, especially the folks who spend years with the same spacecraft and who do not all have PhDs.

The lack of integrating the history of biology, which has also undergone major changes since the 1970s (including the discovery of horizontal gene transfer), or any specific mention of the "handedness" (abiotic processes can process molecules that are mirror images of each other equally; biotic processes generally do not) as a diagnostic tool for past life were major missteps. Stewart Johnson's position as an astrobiologist who has done serious microbiological research was breezed over without the same detail as early Mars missions.

Overall, this book illustrates the need for more science-informed historians or scientists themselves to start writing and publishing about the era we're in today: where every Mars launch opportunity has multiple missions being sent (including three in July of 2020, when this review was first drafted, alone) and more robotic missions planned to icy worlds like Europa and potentially Triton. Under Desert Skies: How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets for me is still the platonic idea of this genre, where a science-informed journalist/historian did hundreds of interviews and captured a small but representative history of 20th and early 21st century planetary science. Hopefully there are many more histories of space science from typically minoritized viewpoints in the works, and it was disappointing that this one fell short.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World, by Sarah Stewart Johnson, is an interesting book by a key NASA scientist in the quest to find life on Mars. This book is a journey through the speculative analysis of Martian life, still not a proven thing, and one that looks like it may be increasingly difficult to pertain. Do not be fooled though; this book is not a look at the hopeless, but instead a light and poetic analysis of life and how humans seek it on another world. Johnson looks through human history, from the earliest days of speculation, to Sagan, Mackay and the strange Antarctic meteorite, and on to Spirt, Opportunity and into the near future of Mars exploration. What humans have so far proven is that life is complex, rare, and potentially nothing like what we think it is. Much of the hubris of ideas in this book relates to understandable applications of how life works on Earth into the cosmos. What we have come to learn is that this cannot be how we look for life; we need to be open to new ideas and concepts on what life could look like. Much of this stems from our own continued discoveries of extremophile bacteria and lifeforms, as well as how life may have developed from complex carbon-based materials. A fascinating and poetic book that captures the yearning to seek life on other worlds - especially Mars, and how it drives, in some small ways, human wonder and knowledge. A solid read, and one to look for if you are interested in astrobiology through a literary lens.

[Lauren]

• THE SIRENS OF MARS: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson, 2020.

"The story of Mars is also a story about Earth: how we've sought another stirring of life in the universe, and what that search has come to mean... Mars has been a blank canvas, and our human hearts have rushed to fill it in."

SIRENS is a detailed chronicle of all Mars research from the last few decades, and her own journey to study planetary science and exobiology leading to her work at MIT and then later with NASA and JPL for Mars Rover missions among many other amazing accomlishments.

Johnson often employs a lyrical and poetic voice when describing Mars and the passionate exploration by her colleagues and forebearers. One of the most striking moments in the narrative, towards the end of the book, was the day that she gave birth to her first child and Mars Curiosity rover landed in 2012. The way she describes that culmination of her personal and professional life was very well done - not saccharine or over sentimental, but just really amazing in scale.

Greatly enjoyed Johnson's book - a history of exploration, a memoir, and a scientific deep dive into geology and the search for life on Mars.

[Kelly]

he book explores the history of science as it relates to our understanding of our closest planetary neighbor, Mars. It’s chronological, from about the 1950s until now, but it goes much further back than that, digging into what made seeking out life in worlds outside of our own so captivating and the wheres, whys, and hows of the beliefs people had through time about space.

Woven into the history and major players in Mars exploration is Johnson’s own memoir of growing fond of this research. And it’s this, perhaps, that made me so captivated by the book. It’s got the heavy research, but it’s coupled with the human aspect of why. Why are scientists -- and the average person -- obsessed with the idea of life on Mars? What does life mean, anyway? And what if what life is isn’t necessarily something we want it to be?

The book explores beliefs ranging from those of Percival Lowell who believed a utopian society existed on Mars to Carl Sagan and the research he did and ultimate disappointment he and others felt when his theories didn’t align with what physical evidence was found until after his death, to Audouin Dollfus, who conducted astronomical research with stratospheric balloons. Johnson parallels this research with the work she and other scientists are doing here on Earth in some of the most remote and inhospitable places, like the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia (with discussion that reminded me a lot about the otherworldliness of The White Sands in New Mexico and the gypsum the dunes are comprised of).

It’s a personal book as much as it’s a universal book, and it was such a thought-provoking work about what life is -- and what life may not be. Johnson, from what it sounds like, believes we found life on Mars but because it’s not life we think life looks like, it’s a hard sell. And that, at least for me, is what is at the heart of the book: what are the lines between scientific evidence and human belief? What makes some things easy to understand and others easy to dismiss?

For readers who love science, space, and philosophy mixed smartly with memoir.

[Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

The history of Mars science and exploration is interesting. The author is not. The interesting bits of this book are slowed down too much by the author's attempt to inject bits of her own story and perspective into it. I read a lot of science books, and this attempt to "humanize" the basic facts by relating it to the author's personal experiences is a common technique. The quality of the authors' biographical elements vary wildly from book to book. The thing that makes this book worse than most is that the author seems to think she is a gifted writer who can arouse a sense of the profound in her readers with lyrical passages. Actually, it comes off more like undergraduate creative writing workshop purple prose. Here's a particularly egregious example of her reaction to contemplating the fragility but tenacity of a small fern growing at the barren top of Mauna Kea and how it helped her realize her life purpose (really):

I suddenly saw something I might haunt the stratosphere for, something for which I’d fall into the sea: not fame or glory or a sense of adventure, but a chance to discover the smallest breath in the deepest night and in so doing, vanquish the void that lurked between human existence and all else in the cosmos. On that trip, I started to realize that, just like with [Mars rover] Pathfinder, the process of reaching might tell me the most, might give the chance to grasp the deepest mystery. In finding that fern, I also found something small, fragile, and worth cultivating deep inside myself.

If that's your thing, read this book right away. Maybe by the time you're done my eyes will have stopped rolling.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fantastic. It’s sweeping, fascinating, both inspiring and awe-inspiring. I can’t say I retained everything, but that’s okay because I’d like to reread it someday.

[Ieva · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book itself is good, maybe I was simply expecting something else. As cover says it is part of memoir, history and education.
Book contains ~58 pages of notes that are listed as material used for the research etc.
Somehow I didn't enjoy the way how the book is written, I caught myself too many times driven off to my personal thoughts and could not follow the story that smoothly.
I think this could have been much exciting than it was for me. It would be incorrect to compare this to "Martian" as this book is from real life, but somehow I thought maybe this one will be also very captivating, but not this time.
As said, maybe it was just not the right time for this book. Nevertheless, I think there will be definitely other people who will enjoy.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something comforting and reassuring about reading science books. One can also add “rewarding” if reading the book means one is in the capable hands of Sarah Stewart Johnson, author of The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World. The book is part science history, part contemporary science, and part memoir and personal journey. While readers derive the comfort and reassurance from the inevitable plethora of indisputable facts, the reward comes from Ms. Johnson’s beautiful and fluent writing, which often has the ability to stir the soul with wonderment about Mars and all other planets in our solar system.

Despite the preceding comment about “plethora of indisputable facts,” the word “conjecture” also pops up quite frequently in this absorbing book, for even hard data often cannot tell the full story, and it is left to energetic and imaginative scientists to ask intelligent what-if questions to derive smart hypotheses and set about proving (or refuting) them. Ms. Johnson pays homage to well-known names in space exploration, from Galileo to Carl Sagan, but also gives fair tribute to less familiar movers and shakers, such as Giovanni Schiparelli and Percival Lowell.

Ms. Johnson provides comprehensive and objective coverage of the many attempts to learn more about our planetary neighbor over the last 30-40 years, including both failures and successes. Despite all the past outcomes being known, her clever narrative accomplishes the remarkable literary feat of placing readers right beside early planetary scientists as they teased out their speculations or had their discoveries confirmed. Whether right or wrong, readers enjoy a sense of discovery all their own. The author herself and colleagues come “under the spell” of each new fact about Mars, and wallow in “tantalizing evidence” gleaned from each new path for exploration. One scientist “could almost taste how good the data would be” from photographs taken on the Mars Observer mission.

Exploration of Mars advanced in (relatively) rapid strides. “Orbiters” of the planet were succeeded by “landers,” which actually touched down on the planet but remained rooted to the spot. Ultimately came the “rovers,” which trekked this way and that across the Martian landscape, conducting experiments and collecting samples, and sending related data to insatiable, Earth-bound scientists for analysis. One valuable addition to this otherwise perfect narrative would have been a timeline of Mars missions, and a selection of photographs would have been real icing on the cake.

Exploratory efforts eventually converge towards trying to answer the question: “Was there, is there, could there be life on Mars?” As well as Johnson’s book, a quick visit to a NASA website on the subject will offer a hedging answer: “We don’t know…yet.” However, the Curiosity rover collected and analyzed rock samples, and allowed scientists to declare that “All six of the elements required for life as we know it were present in the sample: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.” (The italics are mine, for it is worthy of note that scientists are also quite comfortable with being open to the discovery of life as we don’t know it.) Further heat treatment of the samples led to the discovery of “even more complex molecules, bound together by sulfur…The building blocks of life were indeed there.”

Johnson proves to be a multitasker extraordinaire as she pursues graduate and post-graduate education, participates on several Mars missions, marries and becomes a mother. In fact, the author’s story of Mars becomes most personal when the Curiosity rover (aka the Mars Science Laboratory) was speeding towards a landing on the planet. Though not exactly parallel events, Ms. Johnson does a bewitching and poignant job of juxtaposing the birth of her son into the Earth world with the arrival and landing of Curiosity in the Martian world.

By the end of this fabulously accessible and engaging book, readers are bound to be caught up afresh in the possibility of “other life out there.” And rather than a source for mere wonderment about the possibility, it will morph into a deep yearning for extraterrestrial life to just be out there, gosh darn it! Additionally, Ms. Johnson takes readers convincingly to the point that Mars is simply a beginning of planetary exploration—look out Jupiter!

[Tomislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many people, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of life on Mars. In my case, this was fed by my reading of science fiction from earlier eras of higher expectations, and also by having grown up in the US during the Mariner missions. I had poster-sized photos from Viking 1 lander on my college room walls.

Sarah Stewart Johnson’s book is in part an approachable history of the scientific revolutions in the conception of life and planetary science on Mars, featuring the successive lowering of expectations over the years. And yet, I feel that knowing reality is always better than ungrounded speculative optimism – and clearly Johnson agrees. She relates the perspective of JPL insiders during the decades preceding her own participation. I have to admit it was a little disturbing for me to read that her father is closer in age to me than she is. For example, she was an infant during Carl Sagan’s Cosmos miniseries. Most importantly, she discusses the impact of each wave of new data on theory, and the design of new experiments for the new realities. The book was published in 2020, and she ends this thread with a discussion of the goals of the Mars 2020 mission. Reading it now in 2025, the Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter are historical accomplishments, and I needed to resort to some internet searches to learn what the impacts of their findings have been. It seems that the possibility of chemical energy life in Mars’ past was confirmed, but not actually found (yet?). A future mission to retrieve the core samples taken is so uncertain as to not have a firm date. I’d be happy if someone could give me a reference for an overview of the findings of Mars 2020, better than the Wikipedia entry.

At the same time, this book is her own auto-biography. She was an enthusiastic math student in her school years, with strongly supportive parents, and received a full-tuition-with-stipend scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis. Personally, I wish I had known that such things were possibilities. But I did eventually reach Wash U myself for grad school, a full 15 years before she arrived on the campus. Her opportunities were great, with faculty mentors and international field travel even as a sophomore. She also made connections that led her to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and to MIT, etc. In the end of the book, which is only in her own middle age, she diverges into some philosophical thoughts that I did not find remarkable.

So, my review is tops for Martian planetary science, and meh on the auto-biography.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson's book is appropriately titled. She writes about humanity's obsession with Mars and Martians over the years. The invention of the telescope allowed scientists get a good look at the distant planet and see what they presumed were canals. More sophisticated telescopes and eventual robotic missions to Mars provided information about the planet's surface and weather but no Martians yet. Currently, at least 3 countries including the United States are again pursuing a greater understanding of Mars and the quest for signs of life on Mars.

The book also chronicles Johnson's youthful interest in rocks and space and her path to a Ph.d and position as a member of the NASA team investigating Mars. This book is a wonderful reading adventure and girls or women interested in pursuing a career in science would both enjoy and be encouraged by reading it.

[Denver Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part examination of Mars and part memoir, Johnson's fascination with the red planet shines through. Tracing the history of planetary observation and exploration of Mars, readers and listeners will discover fascinating fact after another on how Earth-bound scientists have poked and prodded their way around the planet, hoping to find clues about our own human-bound existence. The author's comparisons on how seasonal weather affects like on Earth to how those same seasons apply to Mars is fascinating. Don't skip the Notes - at least skim to find another intriguing article or book to send you down the Mars rabbit hole! Highly recommended.

[Jillian Lightbown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhh I loved this. Autobiography meets women in science meets MARS I mean come on.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some pretty good sections of science (and history of science, as advertised) writing in this book, unfortunately the enjoyment I had reading these parts were quickly replaced with annoyance by the incessant interludes into the life of Dr. Johnson. These interludes started out fairly on topic, early experiences where Dr. Johnson was fascinated with searching for life in the geologic record, but progressively become less about science and more just about Dr. Johnson, who attempts to reconcile the two by letting her readers suffer through more and more tortured analogies. This book really suffers the same fate as Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto, a book on science merged with a glorified travelogue.

Furthermore, the fact that the cast of people we meet in Dr. Johnson's life (all of whom suspiciously seem to have larger than life personalities and life stories) all seem to be extremely well-to-do people who can drop what they are doing on a whim to travel the four corners of the globe for however long, romanticized longing for the "good 'ole days" of astronomy when the science was done by wealthy aristocrats and telescopes were out of reach to the average man, and the overall 'lyrical' lit-fic style of the writing really portrays a certain level of detachment.

While not about the search for life on Mars, but the possibility of life in other star systems, I'd recommend interested readers to instead check out Elizabeth Tasker's The Planet Factory.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sort of book tends to do three things—and Johnson does all of them extremely well. First, it gives a little bit of biographical information on the author, helping the reader to understand how she was inspired to become interested in her field. Second, it gives a historiography of the great scientists who came before her, showing how they helped to create the modern field of study. And finally, it shows how our understanding of the field has advanced, and in the case of Mars, Stewert spends a lot of time going through the many missions to the red planet that have expanded our knowledge.

Let me start by saying that there were a lot more missions than I understood there to have been, and since I have been interested in Mars since reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, this came as a big surprise to me. I’m sure that most people have heard of Mariner, Viking, and Pathfinder. But did you know about Observer, Global Surveyor, Climate Orbiter, Polar Lander, the Rovers, Phoenix, and more?

It's an interesting book for anyone who is curious about how we know what we know about Mars.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Jake Arluck · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully written and ambitious book, combining a historical account of the search for life on Mars with the author's memoirs of the path that led her to her becoming a prominent scientist. Johnson has serious literary chops, and her style is far more appealing than the faintly condescending TED-talk-meets-elementary-school-lesson tone found in all too many pop-sci books.

My main quibble with this book is less about anything Johnson did and more with the unsatisfactory state of reality. To the question as to whether Mars had or has (microbial) life, the best current science can offer is a resounding "maybe." Accordingly, the narrative arc of the book falls somewhat flat towards the end, as we end with the inconclusive findings of the recent NASA rovers. Some brief discussion of the just-launched Perseverance probe and the results it might discover are interesting, but it's not enough to stop the reader from wanting more.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides an excellent survey of the scientific exploration of Mars, set against the author's engaging personal story of interest and professional work in that exploration. What I found particularly effective was the way that the scientists are each situated in their own historical periods. This makes the limitations and mistakes of earlier eras more understandable, and it gives the discoveries we take for granted today more weight.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about a dry planet. A book which is alive, vibrant, exciting and bursting with all the reasons man wants to explore his universe. The search for life. The search for our place in existence. The answer to the question, "Why?"

I didn't feel like using complete sentences., but I did love this book.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. There are books that indulge fully in the epic grandeur of exploration and this is one. Anyone immune to the wonder and dynamism and allure of science after reading this, frankly has no imagination.