Robert Sawyer's Red Planet Blues: Neither Fish nor Fowl

 Robert J. Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

It’s hard to track a person if you don’t know what body he’s in. He could look like anyone –his own self, a movie star, your best friend… Alex Lomax, greatest private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars (in large part because he’s the only private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars) pretty much has a system, however. He kills ‘em all and lets God sort ‘em out. 

No, to be fair, he doesn’t kill them all: if they’re female, he beds them and then kills them (or tries, anyway). In the finest noir detective tradition, Lomax chases every skirt that comes his way and whips out his other rod for the men. Mike Hammer on Mars? Maybe… 


Two generations into the great Martian fossil rush, prospectors are still searching for the Lost Dutchman of fossil finds, the Alpha Deposit whose location disappeared in a fiery re-entry (along with the men who’d found it). When a single pentapod in good condition can pay for passage back to Earth and a life of ease once you’re home, finding the Alpha would be anyone’s dream come true. That’s probably why everyone is perfectly willing to lie, cheat, steal, and kill to find it. Except one person actually has found it – and he wants Lomax to help keep the secret. 

Idiot: he chose the wrong guy. Lomax is as avaricious as the next man, and only slightly more honorable. But with a gorgeous Indian (sub-continent, not Native American) novelist, a trio of identical mandroids, a foxy Asian honey, and a host of others all shooting at one another out on the desolate plains of Mars; Lomax needs a roster of the participants more than anything else. 

Robert J Sawyer’s Wikipedia entry lists a host of awards, including informing us that he once won Canada’s top mystery-fiction and science-fiction awards for the same short story. Indeed, the first ten chapters of Red Planet Blues are a slightly modified version of a Nebula-nominated novella, “Identity Theft.” The remainder of the novel builds on the same set of premises: Lomax is on Mars, most people there are prospecting for fossils, you can transfer your consciousness to a new body of your choosing for enough cash, the local cops are lazy, etc. Sawyer also repeats – well beyond what appears necessary – the difficulty of damaging a “transfer” body, the ease of locomotion in Mars’ 1/6th-gee gravity, and a host of other points that probably only needed to be made once. 

In short, Red Planet Blues should have stayed a ten-chapter novella. Once it gets past the end of that story, the action pretty much turns into rote repetition of all the noir detective tropes: see a good-looking woman, bed her – if she’s unavailable, just lust after her. See someone you don’t like, shoot him. See a rule that’s in the way, bend (or break) it. Combine that with Lomax’s Murphy-esque luck and his propensity for breaking every promise he ever made and you have satire gone sour. Sure, Sawyer’s inventive, and he deserves props for not using the names “Coltrane” or “Miles” a single time. The book, however, isn’t a particularly good mystery – far too many instances of deus ex machina for this reader’s taste – and it’s only “science fiction” by virtue of its futuristic setting. Lomax never actually solves any mystery after then end of the novella portion; instead the perpetrators clue him in to what was going on after the fact.

There is some dreadful SciFi out there, and there are some lousy mysteries. Red Planet Blues is neither dreadful SciFi nor is it a lousy mystery – but, then, it’s not a very good example, either.