Why am I passionate about this?

I read every science fiction novel I could get when I was a kid. My worldview was shaped by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other SF novelists. I want my readers to feel that same “sense of wonder.” I was fortunate to have been exposed to these big ideas early on because they got me interested in artificial intelligence, space colonization, and Big Science – resulting in my computer science work at NASA-Ames Research Center in the 1980s. My fiction and computer games also draw on these concepts, including my hard SF novels: The Forge of Mars, The Digital Dead (sequel to The Forge of Mars), and Prometheus Road, among others. 


I wrote

The Forge of Mars

By Bruce Balfour, PhD,

Book cover of The Forge of Mars

What is my book about?

In 2054, NASA discovers alien ruins buried in a Martian canyon at the site called Vulcan’s Forge. NASA needs to…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Red Mars

Bruce Balfour, PhD Why did I love this book?

Hard SF writers need to build believable worlds as seen from a variety of character perspectives. These stories require a ton of research to create the details about how technologies may develop and how cultures might respond to those changes to make the story world credible. When I was researching other hard SF novels written about Mars in the early 1990s, Red Mars was at the top of my list because of its high level of detail and character perspectives. I worked for NASA and am picky about technology projections. Although the technologies have continued to change, the novel (published in 1992 with the story starting in 2026) still holds up well in terms of colonization strategies and in terms of the overpopulation and environmental destruction issues as drivers for migration to Mars. 

By Kim Stanley Robinson,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked Red Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. 'The ultimate in future history' Daily Mail

Mars - the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind's dreams of space conquest.

From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists - hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert - Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.

It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot…


Book cover of Moving Mars

Bruce Balfour, PhD Why did I love this book?

What if you have an established culture on Mars in 2171 that wants to be independently governed? What if Mars develops a powerful new technology linking human brains to the most advanced AI ever built, giving them almost magical powers of teleportation? I like this book because it’s another great example of how to make advanced technologies and social developments believable through a small number of character perspectives. Arthur C. Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and I appreciate how this novel was able to accomplish that. As a social scientist, I also appreciate the political aspects of this world as shown through the female lead, who starts as a young student protestor for Martian independence and evolves into a seasoned politician.

By Greg Bear,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Moving Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


She is a daughter of one of Mars's oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples--the extended family syndicates that colonized the red planet. But Casseia Majumdar has a dream of an independent Mars, born in the student protests of 2171. During those brief days of idealism she forged bonds of friendship and hatred that set the stage for an astonishing war or revolution on Mars.


Book cover of Mars

Bruce Balfour, PhD Why did I love this book?

After spending a few weeks on the Navajo lands in Northern Arizona in 1988, I wanted to write my book from the holistic and naturalistic perspective of a young Navajo who had worked for NASA and lived off the reservation for several years (loosely based on a friend of mine). As it turned out, Ben Bova got there ahead of me in 1992, sending a Navajo geologist on the first crewed mission to Mars. While he’s there, he makes a discovery that also ties into Navajo culture. I have always appreciated the worldview of the Navajo people, and characters with this perspective offer a different lens for interpreting Martian landscapes and the possibilities of a new frontier that can be settled without being destroyed by human activity.

By Ben Bova,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

To the harsh landscape of Sol's fourth planet travel thirteen astronauts, the best scientists from eleven nations, on a history-making voyage into the unknown. The international crew of the Mars mission have spent nine months in space, crossing 100 million kilometres, to reach the last great frontier. Their voyage is fraught with disputes, both personal and political, and their time on Mars limited to 'footprints and flags'; yet while there they will come face-to-face with the most incredible and shocking discovery of all.


Book cover of Stranger in a Strange Land

Bruce Balfour, PhD Why did I love this book?

Heinlein was another master at world building. If you’ve ever heard the slang term, “grok,” meaning “to understand something intuitively,” this is the novel where that originated. Published in 1961, you would think this book about a young man raised by Martians who goes to Earth for the first time (as an instant wealthy celebrity) would be too dated, but it’s a classic satire about Western culture that uses humor to explore concepts such as free love, individualism, and the dangers of mixing religion with politics. I had the privilege of having a few conversations with Heinlein back when I was adapting his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress into a computer game for Interplay in 1987 (one year before he died at age 80), and have always liked his ability to make future human societies believable.

By Robert A. Heinlein,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Stranger in a Strange Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The original uncut edition of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Hugo Award winner Robert A Heinlein - one of the most beloved, celebrated science-fiction novels of all time. Epic, ambitious and entertaining, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND caused controversy and uproar when it was first published and is still topical and challenging today.

Twenty-five years ago, the first manned mission to Mars was lost, and all hands presumed dead. But someone survived...

Born on the doomed spaceship and raised by the Martians who saved his life, Valentine Michael Smith has never seen a human being until the day a…


Book cover of The Martian Chronicles

Bruce Balfour, PhD Why did I love this book?

Ray Bradbury wrote a lot of stories that were warnings, using a lyrical and humanistic style that makes you feel both the sense of wonder about “colonizing” a new world while also demonstrating the hubris of our culture. When the first humans land on Mars, it turns out that Martians have been living there for thousands of years and they really don’t care about the new arrivals who look somewhat like themselves. Most of Bradbury’s colonizers inadvertently destroy the ancient Martian culture and environment just as they have destroyed Earth. This book is really a set of linked short stories that use satire and poetic language to demonstrate how humans are still children who can’t be trusted with the technologies they have created.

By Ray Bradbury,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked The Martian Chronicles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Martian Chronicles, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.

In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work…


Explore my book 😀

The Forge of Mars

By Bruce Balfour, PhD,

Book cover of The Forge of Mars

What is my book about?

In 2054, NASA discovers alien ruins buried in a Martian canyon at the site called Vulcan’s Forge. NASA needs to figure out who left them, and what they might mean to Earth, so they send AI and nanotech researcher Tau Wolfsinger. Brilliant and intuitive, he’s as much an outsider at NASA as he has been everywhere else.

What Tau doesn’t know is that the Martian ruins aren’t the first of their kind. The others are in the hands of the Davos Group, a shadowy international organization whose members have been hiding similar artifacts for decades, trying to unlock their secrets. Tau has sworn that his talents will not be put to military use, but dangerous people are watching him now, and they do not intend to be stopped.

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Sor Juana, My Beloved

By MaryAnn Shank,

Book cover of Sor Juana, My Beloved

MaryAnn Shank Author Of Sor Juana, My Beloved

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.

MaryAnn's book list on the mystical Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

What is my book about?

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.

Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…

Sor Juana, My Beloved

By MaryAnn Shank,

What is this book about?

This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.

One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…


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