Read Part 1: Long Range View: Science Fiction?

The 1% of the 1% is the basic story of Martian colonies, as I conceive them, put there by the wealthiest people on Earth. 50 years from now they will want a place to escape population growth and the threat of social instability. Surely it is modeled on today's thinking among the super-rich, who long ago built impregnable fortresses in multiple redoubts worldwide. But conceive a world of 20+ billion population in the predictable 22nd century. There won't be a square inch of security or social stability on Earth. Combat of one kind or another will be daily grisly routine. The super-rich won't stand for that kind of world. They will escape it.

The 1% of the 1% control quite a bit of money, roughly 1/3 of liquid world wealth stashed in government and investment-grade corporate bonds. If they wanted to, they could leverage those bonds into a $2 trillion project to build a colony on Mars, far from Earth and its taxes, wars, crime waves, collateral damage and waves of starving migrants. The first thing to build on Mars is an industrial mining colony to produce water, steel, plastics, and heat. Make it spartan but adequate for 1000 workmen who we hope will grow in number by bringing 1000 women to farm, feed and bed the men. Order production of construction materials for a new dome, a shining capital on a sunlit mesa, about 50 miles from the first colony. Connect them with a railroad line. Send dome spinning industrial robots to assemble a nine square mile geodesic shell. Furnish it with every luxury imaginable. High-rise condos. Mansions. Gardens. A golf course. Pools and fountains. Refined formal shopping centers with hairstyling, tailors, and high tech medical care.

So Mars is an imaginary disaster. A large overfed middle class in Big Red serve the plutocrats who own everything. Sullen, lawless working class wage slaves 50 miles away are marshalled by armed Security cops. They control travel, monitor activity of the tradesmen and laborers who commute 50 miles from the mining colony and return each night after long construction shifts, topping out another skyscraper in Big Red, a shiny new headquarters for M Corp.

Might have gone on forever like that, an extremely pleasant city for rich people and a dark dust blown valley for dirty workers who have no manners. Sounds like Earth again. Suppose there was a miscalculation about proved water resources and M Corp can't pay interest to leveraged bondholders, because exports have to be stopped. Aristocrats on Mars might lose control of their sunlit citadel in bankruptcy. A reckless conspiracy is hatched and they order minions to fake a disaster -- wrap the entire planet in a layer of radioactive debris. Screw the bondholders and Space Command. Knock down whatever they throw at us.

It's action adventure when you mix in an undercover Federal Marshal sent to investigate reports of something strange happening on Mars. The 1% must find him and kill him. Learn more at my Kickstarter campaign.