“Fifteen-year-old Thomas Knight lives on the Mars Station, a strictly controlled interior city on the Red Planet in the late 21st century. He learns all he can about Earth, the “origin planet,” which superfloods rendered uninhabitable a couple of decades earlier. His Earth obsession could lead to trouble—Martian inhabitants are confined to the Station, and attempts at escape are dealt with harshly. One day, Thomas meets a stranger who makes the startling claim that Thomas is not like his genetically engineered peers—he was the very last child born on Earth (“With a real mother and father? How could that possibly be?”). His birth father, whom he’s never known, has worked with others to implement a plan for Thomas to salvage their devastated world. It entails time-traveling into both the past and the future, but Thomas doesn’t exactly land where he was meant to. Arriving in 2023 Marin County, California, he meets a fellow teenager, Elly McAllister, who can tell him even more about the planet that has long enchanted him. DeLaurentis depicts a visually rich SF setting including the Station’s interior of overlapping circles and the children’s diet of geometric foodstuffs (like freeze-dried triangular tomatoes). The scenes set on Earth are equally engaging as Thomas spots so many peculiar things that Elly must explain to him, from a dartboard to a roller coaster. The relatively small cast shines, including Thomas, who easily adapts to changing circumstances; the ever-helpful and easygoing Elly; and Eno, Thomas’ smaller “counterpart” (the boys room together on the Station), who’s brilliant and loyal. Wherever he goes, the young hero faces obstacles, such as Mars’ sub-zero temperatures, megalodons on Earth, and bullies that, sadly, exist on both worlds. While this book delivers a satisfying, well-rounded adventure, it’s also the first installment in a proposed trilogy—Thomas’ interplanetary, time-hopping journey is just starting.”

Robert DeLaurentis has been a professional TV writer for over twenty years, on series including The OC, Umbrella Academy, Alien, and Fargo, where he won a Writer’s Guild Award and was nominated for a writing Emmy.

The Boy from Mars is the first book in a trilogy that includes The Secret Star and The Eightfold Future.

In the year 2086, a fifteen-year old boy (THOMAS KNIGHT) lives a soulless existence on the claustrophobic Mars Station, built after a series of ‘Superfloods’ deluge the Earth. He lives for the night, which he spends breaking into the Artifacts Museum to feed his insatiable curiosity about the origin planet. One such night, he’s intercepted by a mysterious older man (IGNATIUS) who claims to have worked with Thomas’s scientist father on Earth, and gives him some shocking news. Thomas was not only the last child born on the planet, but the centerpiece of a daring plan hatched by his father. Using advanced time travel technology, he’s to be sent back in time to save the Earth by doing the near impossible: starting a new future.

Read the first chapter →