Another Girl, Another Planet

Book excerpt: In an alternate 1980s, a Mars colony bureaucrat finds himself battling corruption, conspiracy, and undercover androids in this sci-fi thriller. Few people believe Dave Shuster’s stories about the red planet. But now government agents are eager to discuss a photo showing a graveyard on its surface, complete with crosses. Shuster claims that he once lived on Mars . . . in an alternate timeline. According to his story, he was a low-level bureaucrat in the administration of a joint US/Soviet colony. And things did not go well. During his posting, Shuster was caught up in a murder mystery involving the illegal use of robot technology. The Cold War had taken a very different turn—largely influenced by Admiral Robert Heinlein. When Shuster arrived on Mars in 1985, he was thrown into a power vacuum, force to fight a rogue industrialist with some help from unlikely sources in a society infiltrated by unnervingly realistic androids. This is his testimony.