“At what point can we say that humanity inhabits Mars? When a few astronauts land? When the first group of settlers arrive? Bae Myung-hoon’s answer: when children and artists live there. When spaceships regularly operate between Mars and Earth, when conflicts break out over real estate development, and yes, when you can eat ganjang gejang. If Mars is human land, if it’s home to both messy power struggles and tender, budding love, let there be Rice Thieves for Martians!”
——Chae Kyung Sim, astronomer

“Reading Bae Myung-hoon’s work makes each and every person’s life seem a brilliant sparkle. He writes about people on Mars the same way. Even on Mars—perhaps especially on Mars—Bae’s faith in the possibilities of language burns bright.”
——Ko-eun Yun, author of The Disaster Tourist

“[This book] can only be described as pure Bae Myung-hoon sci-fi.”
——Soyeon Jeong, founding member of the Science Fiction Writers Union of the Republic of Korea

•For fans of John Scalzi, Andy Weir, and Kim Stanley Robinson
•The first Korean composite novel on humanity’s migration to Mars—and its very real, political and sociocultural implications
•Inspired by the author’s two-year research project on planetary politics commissioned by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs

English samples are avaiable.

Humanity builds a new world on Mars as it grapples with its identity and the planet it left behind.

Acclaimed by astronomers and writers alike, Mars and I is the first composite novel in Korea dealing with humanity’s migration to Mars. It contains six interconnected stories that follow new Martians striving to start a civilization on the planet’s barely habitable deserts. With his trademark humor and sharp intellect, Bae Myung-hoon portrays a future generation of humanity dreaming up systems and institutions that would avoid hyper-development, climate crises, and other disastrous mistakes made back on Earth. Martians make alternately hilarious and moving attempts to rethink their relationship with other people, with food, sex, and jobs, with nations and wars, and with their new, unpredictable planet.

Bae Myung-hoon is the author of Tower (Honford Star, 2021), Launch Something! (Honford Star, 2022), and The Proposal (Honford Star, 2024). Tower is the first Korean science fiction book by a single author to be translated into English. Known for his inventive worldbuilding and biting political humor, he has written over a dozen novels and short story collections, an essay collection, and a sci-fi children’s book.

“The Way of the Red Planet”
Red dust storms and solar storms ravage Mars, to which humanity has incrementally migrated from Earth and formed a small settlement of 2,400 people. This Martian diaspora must build a civilization from scratch, reimagining systems of governance and laws befitting Mars’ hostile environment. This gargantuan undertaking is put to the test when the first murder is committed on the planet. How will Martians respond?

“How to be with Kim Joan”
A couple goes “long-distance” when only one of them is selected to migrate to Mars. She’s a botanist tasked with developing crops that can survive on Mars. He’s a meteorologist observing the increasingly grim toll of climate change on a dying Earth. She’s bound for the future, he’s left behind. He calmly tells the reader—and himself—how
to stay together with an extraordinary woman like Kim Joan even as he senses their inevitable drifting apart.

“The Greatest Rice Thief”
A 3D printing engineer newly settled on Mars is seized by an obsessive but impossible craving: she wants to eat ganjang gejang. But how is she going to find a fermented crab marinated in Korean spices on a planet that has no ocean? Where residents survive on genetically modified crops and alternative proteins, where food is sustenance rather than delicacies to be savored? She makes an impassioned case for why crabs should be imported to Mars from Earth in front of an unimpressed committee that has never seen or tasted the ultimate Korean soul food, otherwise known as “the greatest rice thief.”

“Planetary Blockade”
An artist advocating “planetarism” over nationalism finds millions of supporters on Earth, prompting nations to banish her to Mars where she is to be prosecuted. She takes refuge in a cycler that shuttles people between Earth and Mars. But its peaceful orbit is cut short when a powerful nation on Earth bans it from transporting an incoming group of 103 dissidents to Mars. If the cycler refuses? It will be shot down with a missile. The crew has 27 hours to decide between blockade and connection, between nationalist and planetarist visions, between fear and love.