REVIEW: Dinner on Mars by Lenore Newman and Evan D.G. Fraser
From Impossible Burgers to lab-made sushi, two witty, plugged-in food scientists explore leading-edge AgTech for the answer to feeding a settlement on Mars — and 9 billion Earthlings too.
Feeding a Martian is one of the greatest challenges in the history of agriculture. Will a Red Planet menu involve cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast? Will medicine cabinets overflow with pharmaceuticals created from engineered barley grown using geothermal energy? Will the protein of choice feature a chicken breast grown in a lab? Weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting, figuring out “what’s for dinner on Mars” is far from trivial. If we can figure out how to sustain ourselves on Mars, we will know how to do it on Earth too. In Dinner on Mars, authors Fraser and Newman show how setting the table off-planet will supercharge efforts to produce food sustainably here at home.
For futurists, sci-fi geeks, tech nuts, business leaders, and anyone interested in the future of food, Dinner on Mars puts sustainability and adaptability on the menu in the face of our climate crisis.
Review
I requested this book because it sounded fascinating. Space flight, colonies on Mars, and … gotta have food to feed the colonizers. This is brought home by the intro chapter which discusses Captain Sir John Franklin’s famous 19th century search for a Northwest passage that ended in starvation for him and his crew. One thing right off the bat, the book is written as a sort of third person discussion between the two authors which I found very odd and off putting. They also mentioned Covid a lot as it was just shutting down the planet right as they began – via Zoom – talking about and then writing the book. I hate being reminded of Covid.
These two geek out as they put a lot of thought into what will need to occur before humans might have a snowball’s chance of surviving on Mars. There will probably need to be a lot of prep work via robotics before humans arrive. And as with the early Moon missions, a lot of that science and industry could have profound uses here trying to fix the mess that our current climate and food production systems are in. There are lots of tidbits of information about how scientists are now working to improve farming and soil conservation that are interesting, heartening, and also (due to the above mentioned “mess situation”) downright depressing. Other neat and interesting historical facts are mentioned which helped make up for the depressing.
As interesting and fascinating as the subjects are, I will reluctantly raise my hand and admit that at times, it’s a bit more intense and scientific than what an armchair reader probably wants. I hope that the things that scientists are working on can help turn the tide on modern food production and how it affects our planet and that one day, we will have a colony of bold adventurers on Mars. B-
~Jayne
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