The Daily Wire’s ongoing series highlighting lesser-known books for conservative readers has turned its sights to science fiction — and the three picks are as unconventional as they come. In the third installment, author David Hines reviews Travis Corcoran’s Red State Mars, Devon Eriksen’s Theft of Fire, and Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Legionnaire, each taking risks that mainstream sci-fi rarely does.
Red State Mars: When Right-Wing Factions Clash on the Red Planet
Set in 2126, Red State Mars imagines a settled Mars divided into Chinese and American domes with amicable trade relations — until the Chinese government embraces caste-producing genetic engineering and changes its laissez-faire stance toward colonists who fled Earth to avoid enhancement. The new regime turns heavy-handed with American colonists, sparking a shooting war that threatens to wipe out the colonists or fundamentally alter their politics.
Inspired by David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, which traces American cultural influences to Cavaliers, Puritans, Scots-Irish, and Quakers, Corcoran uses that lens alongside neoreactionary thought — religious theonomists, nationalist ethnats, and techno-commercialists — to force different kinds of right-wingers into friction. As Hines notes, the resulting frustrations feel familiar to anyone acquainted with conservative subcultures, from fringe to mainstream.
Corcoran isn’t just a novelist; he’s an elected official, giving him firsthand knowledge of how hard it is to get groups to agree. That insight builds tension as heroes watch who’s talking to whom to anticipate votes. The battle scenes deliver, too — ground and space fights culminating in what Hines calls “perhaps the most audacious attack you’ll read in a novel this year.”
Hines, a self-described close friend of the author, doesn’t shy from criticism: individual voices within factions blur, the Atkins clan all speak alike, and one set-up and payoff doesn’t quite land. The prose isn’t stirring except in musings on Martian geology — which are present, spoiler alert. But Hines insists readers won’t be dissuaded, comparing Red State Mars to early work by sci-fi legend Robert A. Heinlein. Sequels are promised, but the novel stands alone. The Ark Press hardcover — with its cover, dust jacket, and endpaper maps — earns praise for its physical beauty.
Theft of Fire: Late-Heinlein Goofiness in Space
If Red State Mars channels early Heinlein, Theft of Fire is late Heinlein: goofier, more emotional, and hornier. The premise is simple — genetically engineered anime girl ice princess Miranda Foxgrove shanghais a ship belonging to asteroid miner Marcus Warnoc, who has descended into piracy to stave off financial collapse. She forces him to take her to a space discovery she believes will change everything. Sparks fly, and the ice princess melts while the crusty miner softens. She also needs help getting in and out of her skin-tight space suit — repeatedly.
The book unfolds in two acts. The first is a lengthy stage play of two characters butting heads while negotiating their social situation aboard a spaceship. The second is an action-packed chase and fight, emphasizing the hardship of high-g travel. Eriksen gives his characters distinct personalities and small-scale objectives, keeping the power dynamic in constant flux.
Hines finds the structure clunky — the first act runs long, the second feels padded — and the ending offers meaningful closure for characters but leaves threads dangling for a sequel, Box of Trouble, delayed by a family health crisis. As Hugo- and Dragon-nominated author Kit Sun Cheah noted, the hard science softens selectively for drama, making it feel like a mostly realistic TV series.
Yet Eriksen, a first-time author, “writes his tail off” on a scene-by-scene level. Heavy social media promotion and relentless spousal marketing drew readers in, but the tension, suspense, and lively dialogue kept them. There may be too many negotiations and too much banter, but it’s all entertaining. Hines believes Eriksen starts from a much stronger place than almost any debut author, with clear potential to improve.
Legionnaire: A Zippy Future-War Tale
Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Legionnaire — part of a 25-book series — was a recommendation Hines initially resisted. Advertising billed each installment as essential to an interconnected whole, making it sound like homework. He’d also bounced off their military-vs-fantasy series starter Forgotten Ruin, which he found padded and repetitive.
But Legionnaire proved a pleasant surprise. It’s a fast-paced, war-on-terrorism-inspired future war story following legionnaires on the ground in hostile territory, tasked with a mission poorly conceived by their chain of command. When things go wrong, attrition leaves the protagonist in charge amid a unraveling tactical situation and an infuriating political officer claiming — inaccurately — that he’s really in charge. The combat plays well, and the authors cast both appreciative and jaundiced eyes on the legion: its honor, the regret that service often isn’t for much, and the doomed sense that soldiers serve anyway.
The book isn’t groundbreaking, and the ending drags — framed as a story told by an old legionnaire in a bar — but it’s “a perfectly good hammock read.” Hines suggests that if readers enjoy it, they can follow others’ favorites in the series to find the next book to try.
David Hines, the reviewer, has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and claims to love books — “possibly even yours.” The article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s culture and lifestyle section.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/three-wild-sci-fi-books-that-refuse-to-play-it-safe