Last week I bought and read Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, Dinner On Mars. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars now has competition in the leftwing authoritarian space. And how!
I'll start by slapping the authors silly(-er) for omitting the index. When you don't have an index you are telling your readers to go pirate the PDF. (Disclosure: I was honest. I hold a Barnes and Noble membership and bought this book there.) In a (slightly) happier note I see a partial-bibliography, of the "Further Reading" genre. Here we learn that the authors have read Zubrin's Case for Mars and Robinson's Red Mars; in the main text Fraser cops to The Martian (the movie not the book, but that's fine, and he's surely read that too).
Newman admits to a female "partner", which means she has taken herself out of the running for future humanity. Her causa, instead, is Earth: she wants not directly fewer people, oh no, but poorer people (who will then decide economically not to increase their families). The book admits that Malthus and lately Ehrlich were wrong, but this is to well-detectable chagrin.
You could run a full drinking-game on "we must" comments at this book's conclusion, pp. 202-6. The book here p. 203 touts how wonderful Canadian "policy" worked for getting everyone vaccinated against Covid. "Policy" means force. Yes: Newman - excuse me, "the book" - intends to tax carbon p. 206. Newman should say force. Newman should tell her readers outright that she is a Fury - but for everybody! Fraser, that soyboy - or oatboy as pp. 110-14 would prefer - is not the man to stop her.
Getting past Newman's noxious misanthropy was a chore, for this blogger - also of a misanthropic and authoritarian bent. Hey; I just prefer that people say what they are. Come out come out little girl!
On the other hand: Newman has restrained at least her misandry, enough to work with Fraser, to the extent his Y chromosome works. And the book is pro-labour, or at least purports to be (a directly anti-immigration stance would have been key here, for a book which claims pp. 156-7 to know economics). So maybe there's something in Newman that can be reached.
For another thing Newman is a vegan. On this much I'm more amenable; Mike Cernovich and I think Robert Kennedy have made trenchant comments on how we grow meat in the West - actually on our diets generally, which both this book's authors agree on. The book makes a semidecent case for e/acc legume-and-fruit veganism, although branching to seeds like Oatly (which we won't see @cernovich). The book further recommends fake crab and fake salmon, and fake egg, even the Impossible Burger (which I still doubt is quite ready).
On the other side of the semi is almost-certainly Fraser: the book recommends - and outlines! - artificial trout-runs pp. 183-9. For my part I think Martians will rather enjoy watching koi and catfish swim about in 3.73 ms-2, and snails and tilapia might help keep the ponds clean. If Fraser had read more Zubrin - How To Live On Mars, say - he's too polite to note that this book recommended bringing chickens and goats too, which Newman would refuse. One does however wonder about guinea-pigs and rabbits.
Overall Newman and Fraser boost ahead of the Weinersmiths if only because Dinner on Mars does argue that we should be getting out there. I remain a Gillilandist, more-inclined to spinning habs, than to Mars proper. Newman (particularly) is so authoritarian and misanthropic that I shouldn't want in on a colony she's queen of. Same as she probably wouldn't want citizenship in the Baghistan.
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