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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Douglas D. Meredith’s Food, the fourth Generation Mars novel, an artificial general intelligence named Athenai stops a nuclear war by destroying Earth’s electronics and surrounding the planet with lethal orbital debris. Luna is cut off from resupply, leaving twelve-year-old Keiron Byrne trapped at Metzger Base as its food stores shrink. A dormant cycler on an Earth-to-Mars route offers one possible escape, but the adults calculate that the remaining supplies can carry only the children. Keiron boards a ferry with young passengers from two lunar settlements, leaving his parents behind for a five-month crossing no child was meant to manage alone. Reaching the abandoned ship is only the beginning. As every meal is counted and Earth remains unreachable, hunger begins changing the community they are trying to build.
“There will be no more food, and we will starve.” Douglas D. Meredith’s Food is a terrific fourth entry in the Generation Mars series, and Meredith does an excellent job of making every technical idea matter to the children’s survival. I love Jun Tian, a boy whose time in his father’s lab becomes crucial when he finds a way to grow plastic-eating algae on the ship’s padding. The idea sounds outrageous, but the author works through the biology so well that eating the walls makes complete sense. Ai, the cycler’s computer, is wonderfully unsettling because a calm suggestion about reducing oxygen turns mathematics into something frightening. The long approach to Mars is written brilliantly too, with safety visible while orbital mechanics still decide when anyone can reach it. Readers who enjoy science fiction with real heart will enjoy this. Very highly recommended.
