Keep Mars Weird by Neal Pollack

Published by 47North on January 5, 2016

Keep Mars Weird begins in Austin, which undoubtedly contributes to the playful title. Mars was weird once, but now it’s just “a lie propagated by the sinister real estate industry.” Perhaps Neal Pollack intends Mars to be an allegorical Austin. Not living there, I have no clue.

Doing his part to keep literature weird, Pollack imagines a future in which inequality and greed (along with a good bit the Earth’s population) have been eliminated. Everybody has Enough and nobody needs more (or so they are taught). Food production is sustainable, the right to consume marijuana is protected by the Global Constitution (Austin is home to the Willy Nelson School of Natural Pharmaceuticals), and a twenty-hour workweek is viewed as grueling. This is a future to which I am looking forward. Unfortunately, this all takes place 500 years from now, a bit beyond even my most optimistic life expectancy.

Jordan Kinkaid, having just completed his five years of mandatory government service, is now free to do what he wants with his life, if he can decide what that might be. Jordan has a slacker friend named Leonard and a wealthy friend named Dave. Dave lives on Mars, where men still brawl and women are chill. Circumstances send an unwilling Jordan to New Austin on Mars. Having nothing better to do, Leonard goes too. The story follows the divergent paths along which Jordan and Leonard drift.

Things are different in New Austin on Mars. The drugs are better, but maybe they are too good. Trendy consumerism is rampant (not everybody has Enough because the rich have More). Life on Mars does not live up to the hype. The difference between hype and reality drives the plot, as conflict arises between people who prefer the old Mars (the one that really was weird) and those who benefit from the current version.

Much of the novel’s humor depends on an extrapolation of politically correct trends and on a world where the current generation has grown up pampered. Lampooning political correctness can be tricky but Pollack does it with good-natured, rather than mean-spirited, humor. The future generation he depicts is obviously based on a recent generation of young people who were raised to believe they are the greatest creatures ever to roam the planet and should not be burdened with undignified tasks like work. Again, a writer needs to be careful when taking potshots at people (even those who are “a walking id”), but Pollack’s humor is never offensive. At least, it wasn’t offensive to me. Your mileage may vary.

In an even-handed approach to satire, Pollack also lampoons people who aren’t politically correct, particularly real estate developers who base their lives on greed and exploitation while extolling the economic virtues of inequality. And then he lampoons militants who protest against greed and exploitation. And then he lampoons police/military agencies that try to suppress the militants. From libertarians to socialists, from young people to the elderly, from fashionistas to the fashion-phobic, from Uber to manga, Pollack skewers pretty much every group and every trend.

Satire wears thin quickly but Keep Mars Weird is too short and fast-moving to become tiresome. I would say that the novel ends with a couple of unexpected plot twists but the reader should expect nothing but plot twists. The final revelations are a little silly but they fit the tenor of the novel as a whole. Keep Mars Weird isn’t profound but it doesn’t really try to be, despite the sociopolitical lesson that pops up at the end. It tries instead to be funny, and in that it succeeds.

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