Red State Mars by Travis J. I. Corcoran

Name: Red State Mars by Travis J. I. Corcoran
Brand: Ark Press
SKU: ARK-1555-PB-1
Price: 29.95 USD
Availability: InStock

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War and Peace on Mars, as contentious American settler families unite to keep their freedom while a resurgent Chinese totalitarian force wages war for control of Mars and the liberty-loving society American Martians have created.

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A sweeping epic of Mars’s fight for freedom—an unforgettable saga of war, family, and civilization on the red frontier.

For generations, the Newcastles, Mackenzies, Atkinses, Hyltons, and Hollinses have endured the hard red soil of Mars—surviving by individual grit, intense family loyalty, and free-market trade. Scarred by World War III and its long, violent aftermath, they built farms, raised domes, forged alliances, and carried old grudges to a new world. Trade with the nearby Chinese enclaves brought prosperity for a time. But then trade becomes tribute—and tribute becomes force.

When Chinese armored columns grind across Karl’s Ramp and convoys are torn apart in the Chaos, Mars is plunged into war. The clans face an empire pressing down from above and rivalries tearing them apart from within. From isolated domes to the vastness of Martian plains and interplanetary space, war sparks into revolution as the struggle for hearth and home becomes a desperate attempt to form a new nation on an alien world.

A vast chronicle of clans and civilizations, of families too proud to yield, too divided to trust, and too determined to be ruled.

The first entry in the Red State interplanetary series.

ISBN: 9798991641555
Publication date: May 26, 2026

Reviews and Endorsements

“Tough-as-nails pioneer families and a great sci-fi war story wrapped up in a huge epic of Mars’s fight for freedom. Loved it.”
—Larry Correia, New York Times best-selling author of American Paladin and Monster Hunter International

“Despite taking place on another planet, in a world of regular A.I. access, daily 3-D printing of goods, and commonplace drone usage, the Martians are faced with the same questions as our Founding Fathers in the late eighteenth century. They can live comfortably and peacefully with a collar on their necks and someone else’s hand in their wallets, or they can purchase the life they want with the most precious resources of all – blood, sweat, and tears. . . . Red State Mars is an American saga through-and-through.”
—The Federalist

“Just plain cool.”
—Kurt Schlichter, best-selling author of American Warlord

“The stakes of [the American families’] survival kept me invested as the story unfolded, whether it was on the Martian surface, up in orbit, or back on Earth . . . . If you ever wanted Robert Heinlein to punch you in the teeth and question your testosterone levels, Red State Mars is for you.”
—Upstream Reviews

“Corcoran looks at how our current cultural tendencies will diverge given the opportunities and constraints of colonizing a new world. I was caught up in the squabbles of those rugged individualists, and hoping they'd pull together in time.”
—Karl K. Gallagher, author of the Torchship Trilogy

“Summoning tactical acumen, bloody-minded heroics, bug-nutty creativity, and sheer audacity, the citizens of the Nine Cities of Mars mount an astonishing resistance that brings the Earth's two great superpowers to loggerheads and births a new civilization in the bargain.”
—J. Daniel Sawyer, best-selling author of When She Was Gone

“Corcoran takes the classic Heinlein juveniles off into the corner where he roughs them up with reality, complexity, and a refreshingly even hand toward the difficulties of balancing governance and freedom.”
—J.A. Sutherland, author of the Alexis Carew series

“Engineering and explosions—everything I expect and love in a Corcoran science fiction adventure!”
—Daniel Humphreys, author Z-Day series

“What you'd get if you cross-pollinated David Drake and Neal Stephenson, but Corcoran has tapped into a vein entirely his own—part hard science, part political saga, and all high-octane imagination.”
—Rob Kroese, author of Mercury Falls

“This is a book about people’s love and loyalty to a place and each other. It gives us what a good story should: a perspective on ourselves and a view of where we might go from here. I am delighted, inspired, and even hopeful having read this book. It seized me, it pushed me, it scintillates with the possibilities of the future.”
—Daniel M. Bensen

“Readers who enjoyed The Martian or Project Hail Mary will appreciate the way science and engineering shape the plot. This is not a story where technology exists purely as window dressing. The political stakes are high, the military threat feels serious, and the characters are placed in situations that force them to grow, compromise and fight for what they believe in. It feels both classic and fresh, offering the kind of ambitious science fiction that rewards readers who enjoy detail, scale and consequence.”
—Epic Indie

“It is … a pleasure to come across a book which shows how we Americans, the only great modern civilization, now falling back in confusion from our own achievements, might get our society back on track with such works.”
—Blaze Media Frontier

“Most science fiction books are painfully naive about politics . . . But Travis Corcoran isn’t just an author: he’s an elected official who knows those challenges all too well and builds tension with the heroes carefully watching who’s talking to whom to figure out how a vote may go. And as for the battle scenes, there are some terrific fights on the ground and in space, climaxing with perhaps the most audacious attack you’ll read in a novel this year and a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.”
—Daily Wire

About the Author

Travis J.I. Corcoran’s debut novel, The Powers of the Earth, and its follow-up, Causes of Separation, won the Prometheus Award for best novel two years running. Corcoran is also the author of Red State Mars for Ark Press. He’s since published many other science fiction novels, and is also the author of hugely popular homesteading manual Escape the City. Corcoran resides with his wife and dogs on a 56-acre farm in New Hampshire, where he writes code, raises goats and pigs, and tinkers with cantankerous machinery, while also serving as a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.