A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

 What would it take to build a colony on Mars and is it worth the effort?  These are the questions the authors try to answer in this very nerdy and rather irreverent nonfiction. The book starts out with chapters on different technical issues faced by anyone wanting to create a colony in space.  Some are the standard questions, like how would you have food?  How would you get water? Where would be the best place to build a colony on Mars, or on the Moon?  They also address questions that are less often asked, like, how does sex work in zero gravity? Can babies even develop normally in the womb in space?  What would be the long term physical and psychological effects of living in space colony conditions, and could children raised in low gravity ever be able to return to Earth? In the second half of the book, the Weinersmiths address political and legal issues that space colonizers would have to deal with.  They discuss questions like what is the current international law about using resources from space? What kind of government would work?  Would there be increased risks to Earth populations if there were colonies on Mars?  To answer these questions they examine policies related to previous space endeavors, deep ocean development rights, and the settlement of Antarctica.

This is a very nerdy book.  The authors are not scientists, but seem to have done a lot of study to try to ground their assertions in fact or at least informed speculation. They have a snappy writing style, and readers should beware they are not shy in their choice of words. They claim that they started the project as a way to show how space colonization within the next 50 years would work, but (spoiler alert) end up deciding that it isn't really practical in that time frame. There is much mockery of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that is pretty amusing. I am not sure I was the target demographic for this book (more like 30+ people who wear Dr Who t-shirts and attend Star Trek conventions) but I ended out enjoying it quite a bit, even the slightly more boring part about Antarctic politics. (448 p. 2023)