This book was not quite what I expected, but I really enjoyed it. This is more like a collection of essays than I realized it would be and for that reason, I felt it was occasionally repetitive. However, overall I found it to be a very intriguing account of the author's life on "Mars," as well as her experiences here on Earth and her insights and lessons learned from both experiences. Highly recommend especially for those interested in space travel but also just anyone in search of insightful and intriguing memoir-ish nonfiction.

Kate Greene lands a coveted spot to experience a simulated Martian experience in Hawai’i. “For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome.” (@stmartinspress) Right about now you may be thinking this is fiction - nope! It’s non-fic. I loved pretending I was experiencing Mars right alongside her. I learned a ton about space from this short read and then proceeded to share space facts for WEEKS.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Thanks to all my friends who listened to me say “did you know…” about space approximately 40 times.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This one’s fun, a little choppy, and totally ready to take you on the adventure of Kate’s real life while also educating you about space travel.

Yes, it's about Mars exploration, but ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS is so much more than that. A fascinating examination of what it means to recalibrate one's life under extreme conditions. Greene excels at exploring the intersection between science and philosophy, asking the big questions on both a personal and a cosmic scale. Nuanced, lively, and surprising, this book was an absolute joy to read.

In this collection of essays, we follow Kate Greene through a period of her life, which takes some interesting turns. One of the most interesting events in her life is when she becomes a member of a life on Mars simulation to study the eating habits of the faux astronauts. Outside of this simulation, she also reflects on her life, which includes her parents, brother, friendships, marriage and eventual divorce.

I’ve always been fascinated with space, so when I got the opportunity to read this book, I took it. I find the studies on space travel very interesting, and Greene was a member of a simulation that involved pretending to live on Mars while living in an artificial environment built in Hawaii. I never knew how many space studies that take place outside of space until later life, but it makes sense. Even something as simple as food can become a big deal due to the limitations of what and how one can eat while in space.

While the subject matter was interesting, it took me a while to read because the book itself felt disjointed. It is a collection of essays reflecting on various parts of Greene’s life, but because it is a collection of essays from one person, the book bounces around quite a bit. I discovered that I would’ve liked it better if it was in chronological order, but that’s just my preference. The way it bounces around would’ve worked if this was a collection of essays from different people instead of one author.

All in all, I did enjoy the book as well as Greene’s perspective on anything from space to general life experiences. If space related experiments to general life reflections is something you’re interested in, I would highly recommend this. Just be aware that Greene does bounce around subject matter since this is a collection of essays.

I was intrigued by the topic around which the book revolves. It is about a scientific study which involved people mimicking the life they would lead if they were stationed on Mars. Recently, I have come across many videos of this concept in the media and thought this would increase the information I have about it.
In a way, this book did give me a whole new view into what such a scenario would entail, but it was more than that. It is a personal narrative with the author's emotions and life reflected in everything written. This additional aspect was both helpful and not because it caused the narration to digress and take multiple tangents before focusing on the exact topic that each chapter was based. We get a technical as well as psychological take on what people living in close quarters and feeling remote and distanced from the rest of their known world. This is topical in another sense with the isolation that the pandemic has thrust on many. I personally know of a lot of my friends and family who have lived through some strange and unprecedented isolation. Despite that, the number of detours got mildly weary. This does not mean that the book is not intriguing, it is. Given the author's background and the way she wrote, I thought she could have changed the order of presentation to make it a more crisp collection.
Overall, this is something people even slightly interested in the world's fascination with space would like.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

In 2013, science journalist Kate Greene, along with five others, spent four months on Mars. Well, OK, it was four months on the side of Mauna Loa in Hawaii as part of NASA’s Hi-SEAS, a Mars simulation designed to test various aspects of an actual Mars mission: the effects of long-term isolation on a small group, how interpersonal relations can be maintained, the role of food on morale, sleep habits, etc. In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth, Greene conveys her experiences during the simulation via a series of essay, all of which range well beyond her small geodesic dome.

Several strands run through the collection. One, obviously is her time preparing for and then living through her simulation experience. Several other highly personal ones are the life and death of her brother Mark, the end of her marriage, the ways in which her own writing has changed since her experience, and its deeper impact on her. Greene ranges well beyond merely the personal here though, ruminating on larger scientific, societal, and metaphysical issues: why it would be more pragmatic to send an all-female crew to Mars (and conversely why women weren’t part of the Apollo program), the role of big tech in our daily lives, the differing goals of private and public exploration of Mars and space in general, the Tuskegee Study scandal, and more. Specific moments in “Mars” act as triggers or jumping off points, followed by, if I can use an oxymoronic phrase, “focused digressions,” all of which are tied back to her time in the dome.

Honestly, her time on “Mars” makes for the least interesting parts of the book, something one feels Greene herself realizes either consciously or sub-consciously. We spend a relatively brief amount of time there, and the prose is often at its flattest during that time. There is, perhaps, a reason a particular moment there becomes a jumping off point for a meditation on and exploration of the concept of boredom, an idea she tells us is “distinctly boredom” and can lead to the same feeling she’d had of “living in a kind of haze.” That’s a real concern for anyone flying a crew on a months’ long journey in a confined space, and I wish Greene had spent a bit more time exploring NASA’s possible solutions, which include a periscope for Earth-gazing and a (obviously less-advanced) form of Star Trek’s holodeck. Not the only time I wished for a deeper dive into some of the specifics of a potential Mars mission.

Similarly, her relationship with her wife Jill also felt not fully mined and fell a bit flat in its conveyance. In contrast, both the prose and the passion seem to ratchet up whenever Greene writes about her brother; the book comes most alive in those moments even when discussing his death. These, and her musing on more abstract, broader humanistic concerns about connections, future human societies and the like were my favorite parts of the collection.

The prose moves between solid and smooth (those sections in the dome) to movingly lyrical. Greene has a poet’s touch in many a passage, both in the prose and in the use of metaphor and simile, and I simply wrote “Nice” in the margins of several lovely passages. As when she closes a chapter on isolation that brings together her brother’s death with an astronaut (Michael Collins) circling the Moon alone and the migration of Polynesians to the thousand-plus islands of the South Pacific and misfits as explorers and astronauts with how:
At night, inside that dome, when we looked out the window, we could see the lights from the telescopes on Mauna Kea, the volcano due east. And on a clear day we could see Maui. But because of perspective and the way the sky is blue the ocean is blue, to me Maui almost looked more like a spacecraft, or another world, hovering just above the horizon — a trick of the eye and brain that made the next island over feel not so very far away.

There are several equally good moments in Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, but overall the collection felt as if the whole were less than its parts. Or maybe there just weren’t enough such moments where either the prose took flight or the essays bored deep. “Flat” is too all-encompassing a description for a book that was at times moving or offered up some compelling historical/scientific detail or displayed the mind of a poet at work, but “flatter than I would have preferred” works for me. It’s a solid collection with some excellent segments, which makes it certainly worth a read, but there’s a sense Greene missed an opportunity to reverse those descriptors into an excellent collection with some solid segments.

Kate Greene, a physicist turned science journalist, joined the HI-SEAS mission, a NASA initiative to make people live in a simulated Martian environment at 8000 feet elevation atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii. She thoughtfully pens down her unique experience as a crew member in these collection of essays about her times from the HI-SEAS mission.

I loved how Greene doesn’t write down her experience verbatim from her memory. She organizes her thoughts in the form of essays with themes relevant to all humans, like boredom, isolation and conversation; but provides a unique perspective as a pseudo astronaut. In her essays from Mars; are euphemisms for all life on Earth.

There are quite a few I could personally identify with; like how food has immense capacity to influence mood; a fact that is magnified in an environment where carefully weighted and packaged meals are all that is available. There is a lot of scope for boredom, even though the crew members have their days meticulously planted, but then sometimes humans use boredom and monotony interchangeably; something I can be very prone to.

One of her essays on isolation reflects well for all of us, in times of this pandemic. Months being stuck at home, away from friends and family is taking a toll on mental and physical health. I thought I loved solitude, as did she. Quoting from Rilke she writes, “Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.” But off late I often ponder, are humans designed for lives of isolation?
#advancedreaderscopy #arc #bookrecommendation #bookreview #bibliophile #kategreene #NASA #astronaut #mars #book #booksbooksbooks #hardcover #bookish #bookstagrammer #igreads #spacex #hiseas #hawaii #stmartinspress #netgalley #onceuponatimeilivedonmars

This is a collection of essays organized around themes inspired by Greene’s time as a volunteer in one of NASA’s simulated Mars missions. Since the experiment itself was mostly focused on the dietary needs of a Mars crew, it would have made for some pretty dry reading if she had chosen to go with a straightforward memoir but, while I appreciated her conversational tone and clear enthusiasm, the structure felt a little messy. The anecdotes and observations within each essay shared a common theme, but there seemed to be no segue way between them, so it all felt jumpy and disjointed. Additionally, some of the information is already dated. I know it takes time to produce a book for publication, but would it have been impossible to update information, especially when it was about such high profile projects as the SpaceX Crew Dragon? My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy.

I’ve always had an intense fascination with Mars and the moon. Growing up I wanted to become a doctor so that I could become an astronaut. As I got older I realized I was too short for the endeavor. But I am still fascinated with all things space. I love the biographies of astronauts and the sheer courage and strength it takes to battle the elements for the sake of humanity.

This book is a little different in that the author has never been to space. But people like her help to inform the space program in ways that are immeasurable. His books around and initiative to isolate participants for the period of time it would take for a mission to Mars. Stuck in a geodesic dome in Hawaii they must endure small spaces with strangers while they are constantly performing experiments and prodded for their psychological health.

I really liked the balance of emotional personal accounting of the experience with the science and history of space travel. Think Mary Roach lite. I also thought it was stunningly amazing how this experiment ultimately changed the author’s life completely, I imagine this is so often true with real astronauts.

This one gets 3.5 stars from me.

In this freshly published essay-collection, Kate Greene takes her starting point in space exploration in general as well as her own experiences from being part of an experiment simulating Mars on Earth. This environment is pretty much as close as you can currently get to actually being on Mars, as Mars exploration has long been in the planning stages but not yet been realised (will we see this change in the next decade?). The essays often open with discussing any theme related to space (either the experiment or in more general terms) to branch out into other neighbouring questions and topics relevant to the wider public. It’s quite stream-of-conciousness styled in the way the author jumps from one thing to another; which either work to make new and interesting connections or else leave the fragments hanging like individual stars without a common orbit.

One of the themes explored is isolation – particularly interesting to read during an international pandemic and forced lockdown in many countries being either ongoing or recent to have strong poignancy. The Mars experiment Kate Greene was part of included 4 months of total isolation with her fellow teammates in very tight quarters. The experiment itself (HI-SEAS) was intended to test out various things related to a potential Mars trip – clothing, food, social life, much of the tests being somehow related to the psychological challenges for the team. Greene talks about the emotional toll of being shut off from family and friends as well as the world in a wider sense, while also looking at the frustrations of living so closely with the team within. Even small irritants can become full-blown conflicts with little else to distract or space to walk away from the situation. One of the things I particularly loved in her exploration of isolation was the way she explained the sense of time passing, how everything kind of “smoothed over” – nuance and texture filed down like rocks in the ocean, every day eventually losing its individuality. Time doesn’t behave in predictable way in such a place where normal signposts of the passing (like the sun) is non-existent; sometimes it seems fast – like a night of sleep, other times slow – the amount of months spent inside the ship. While one type of struggle with isolation can be the lack of communication with the world ‘outside’ – the author also points out a certain sense of relief from being cut-off from social media, time to detach and turn the gaze within and beyond.

Another ‘theme’ she writes fervently about is space and place, both in the physical and mental; in regard to everything from space-ships and space-suits, our place as earthlings in the universe, having a home in a literal sense, belonging in a metaphysical sense, the body itself as a home and vessel. In this discussion she blends space exploration with personal anecdotes from the experiment and private life particularly successfully, as it becomes a sort of Russian doll-layering – moving both further inside (from the general to the personal, the public to the private) and externally to beyond earth itself (earth to universe, universe to mars, mars to earth). Greene doesn’t always have the answers to the questions she raises but takes you through thought experiments and ponders at the potential to see connections to otherwise seemingly separate questions. This makes it sound as if this book is overtly philosophical – it’s not really although there’s a sense of evaluating what the more scientific or technical innovations, experiments, data, and events mean to us beyond the immediate. What does it mean for example to be able to go to Mars? What would we gain from such a mission? How would human habitation of Mars look like? Would it mirror a familiar class-structure or would it be entirely different? She also points a critical gaze at the monetisation and financing of space exploration in general and Mars exploration particularly – private vs public money and what sort of consequences we can expect this to have for the exploration itself. Science has of course long been made possible through private funding but it also always comes (or should come) with considerations of ethics – despite this possibly being obvious, it does well as a reminder of what we are prepared to give up in the name of progress and whether or not the things we lose are worth the gain.

Kate Greene explores many interesting topics related to space and to wider public life, but like with many essay collections there is some repetitiveness running through it as the same point is being made in several essays as if it’s the first time the reader comes across it. While it isn’t a major detriment it does mean the book peters out slightly in its strength towards the end when the reader is already fairly familiar with Greene’s background, family and personal life; much like the space theme too feels mostly exhausted by the last few essays. If you’re someone who is already a space geek, I don’t know that this book will teach you much new although it might force you to reckon with new angles – thanks to the authors’ literary background I think she manages to give a different perspective to one you’d likely get from a purely scientific background. On the other hand if you, like me, have a more general interest in space you will likely find much food for thought and information to ponder; questions related to living in a space-ship like what they eat or how they keep up hygien, but also things you wouldn’t necessarily think to question like -how annoying is it when someone is exercising – creating a change in oxygen levels in a very packed environment? And perhaps more weighty questions with less clear answers – how much debris have humans already put out in space – how will we deal with all the junk we are already responsible for in future exploration? I found it fascinating to follow this author’s journey, as Buzz Lightyear would say, ‘to infinity and beyond’.

In this collection of essays, Kate Greene reflects on the time she spent during NASA's HI-SEAS mission (a simulated environment created to mimic life on a Martian colony). She spent four months living there with others, playing the part of 'astronaut' and helping with scientific research to determine what a realistic mission to Mars would be like.

The reflections on the HI-SEAS mission were wonderful, and I really enjoyed the first-hand insight and reading about the research that was done, and the part that the author played in helping with the project. There is also other information about space exploration in general throughout the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, at times it felt scattered, and the author often went off on tangents about her personal life which felt out of place. Yes, some of the thoughts were related to her time spent on the mission. It's easy to see how living in 'isolation' made her question certain things and think more about life, but some of the sections felt random and I couldn't see how it fit into the narrative as a whole.

The essay that stood out the most for me was titled "On Isolation." Reading this specific section during COVID lock-down felt surreal. In it, she talks about how isolating it felt living in the simulation, how actual astronauts deal with their lonely living situations, and different types of isolation that others feel throughout their lives.

Overall, I felt lukewarm about this book. The parts that focused specifically on space exploration were wonderful, but I found myself wanting more of those details and information, and skimming through other sections. It's a unique book, and wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but is still enjoyable overall.

Thank you to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, for providing me with a digital ARC via NetGalley.

Throughout July, GeekMom is preparing for the planned launch of the Perseverance rover on July 20th with Mars Month, a month filled with Mars-themed content. Be sure to follow the Mars Month tag to find all of this month’s content so far in one place. Today I am reviewing Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars by Kate Greene.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a sort of memoir that recounts the four months the author spent living inside a simulated Mars habitat known as HI-SEAS (Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) located on the slopes of Mauna Loa. Along with five other people, she spent those months conducting research for NASA into how diet will affect the physical and mental health of a crew sent to live on Mars, along with other experiments such as sleep studies and a look at the effects of prolonged isolation – something I feel most of us appreciate a little better this year than we ever did before.

Rather than just focusing on the four months inside the dome, however, Greene expands her experiences to offer insight on the way human exploration and research was conducted in the past and how it should look into the future. She shares excerpts from the diaries of Shackleton’s crew recorded during the months they spent stranded alone on an ice floe and compares them to our own time in HI-SEAS but, more importantly, she looks to the future and asks questions I’d never even thought to consider. Why do we insist on able-bodied astronauts when legs are more of a hindrance than a help aboard the ISS? Could some forms of artificial limbs actually be beneficial to astronauts living on Mars? Should the first crew to Mars be all-female given that research consistently shows that our generally lower body mass and nutrition requirements make us ideal for the mission? These questions open up a whole world of thought experiments that challenge the way we look at space exploration. Greene notes that “historically, much of Earth’s exploration has been rooted in colonialism and subjugation,” and asks us to consider “what kind of remnant legacies and unexamined assumptions thread through today’s discussions to colonize Mars?”

Related to this are the questions on human research and experimentation. Greene considers ethics and how the limits of acceptable research have changed over the years. She looks back at the horrors of the Tuskegee Study and reveals how today’s tech companies are using us all as unwitting guinea pigs by manipulating our social media feeds – often without our knowledge or consent. She compares this to the endless consent forms she and the other HI-SEAS crew members had to fill in as part of their mission, and also to those filled in by her disabled brother Mark prior to various experimental medical procedures. How different was his ability to “choose” or consent compared to hers when he could either give agree to the experiments or die?

Woven through the discussions of life in HI-SEAS and the thought-provoking questions on future space travel is a deeply personal narrative that ties the whole book together. Throughout her time in HI-SEAS, Greene’s oldest brother Mark was dying after a lifetime spent battling spina bifida and her marriage was also beginning to unravel. She looks back on these events with the benefit of hindsight (her brother eventually passed and she has now separated from her wife) and uses them to consider how major life events and relationships will be tested by long-distance space travel. Should a family member fall deathly sick while an astronaut is on Mars, there is no way to get them home in time, nor even combat the 40-minute delays to communication that the speed of light imposes and the prevent real-time video calls that so many have relied upon to be with family and friends in their final moments during the COVID-19 crisis.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a deeply thought-provoking book that will encourage you to reconsider everything you think you know about space exploration. Not only does it offer a fascinating look at life inside a long-term NASA study but it also looks in detail at the challenges that future Mars crews will be faced with and asks us to confront our own preconceptions about who is best to face those challenges and why we think that.

GeekMom received a copy of this book for review purposes.

Being completely honest, I would have DNF’d this book if I did not have the audiobook to accompany the text. I found a lot of the material to be long-winded and uninteresting. However, there were some chapters (such as “On Boredom,” ironically) that I did find interesting. There are a few small clips that I would share with students since I think they could be great talking points, however, I think most of my students would not find this book interesting.

3.5 stars, rounded up for this review.
Kate Greene's book reads like a blend of memoir and book report on space (meant in a good way). Though filled with scientific jargon and studies, Greene does not write as one that is smarter than thou, and instead explains her mission on "Mars" and other facts about Space travel in a relatable and easily digestible way. Weaving in facts and figures and anecdotes from other books like Endurance to talk about experiences she personally hasn't had--Greene gives us an insight into life on "Mars" as well as some of her personal stories including her divorce from her wife and her brother's illness. The book is broken into fairly short chapters and is easy to read in short or long bursts. I found some chapters more interesting than others and I would have liked to learn more about her reintegration to life after her time on "Mars" but overall this was an interesting book and likely will be a hit for anyone interested in space, space travel, NASA, SpaceX or science in general.

This book focuses on Kate Greene’s time in a simulated Mars habitat in Hawaii, as well as other key moments in her life. I really liked her writing style and learning about the Mars simulation. I wish she would have included more detail about this experience.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars. Maybe because my expectations were to high to begin with. I didn't know it was going to be filled with essays, which is something I am not a fan. I can never get into them.

The writing was good and the story was interesting. I just couldn't get into it.

Kate Greene was one of six people who spent four months living in a geodesic dome in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, simulating a Martian environment. The 'almost' astronauts were human guinea pigs in the Hi-SEAS project focused on the domestic challenges of privacy, food, and shared resources in space.

This book is the result of Greene's struggle to find a way to talk about those months and how they changed her.

Greene travels across a broad range of philosophical questions that arose from her experience, discussing food, finding a balance between solitude and sociability, boredom, and isolation, applying her insights to daily life.

I appreciated her thoughts on the privatization of space technology and the lack of oversight in the data collection and use of social media by tech companies, influencing users without their knowledge or consent.

The Space Race arose from a quest for military and political dominance. Greene asks, is it possible for space exploration to transcend "nationalist pride, capitalist power, and ordinary ego?"

"I've come up with more questions than answers," Greene writes.

Entertaining and informing.

I received a free egalley from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Part memoir, part essays, this book chronicles loosely the months the author spent in a simulated Mars environment recreated as best as possible in Hawai’i.

It’s not so much an exact chronological memoir, than a series of musings and thoughts about loneliness, learning to live in limited space with other people, relationships (inside and outside of the dome), personal reflections… which was both a good and a bad thing as far as I was concerned.

I absolutely loved the parts concerning the mission, its pitfalls and its successes, the people that worked on it. I also found fascinating some of the reflexions, especially when it came to the usual “Earthian” habits (checking social media, instant communication with our loved ones…) getting lost after weeks of isolation. For a real Mars mission would definitely leave its astronauts isolated in that regard as in many others.

I admit I was less interested, though, when reflexions went along other lines than the mission’s. It wasn’t uninteresting per se, but it wasn’t what I came for, so to speak. Had I been in a different frame of mind, perhaps I would’ve enjoyed those more.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to people picking it up, hoping that the majority will be based on the mission and about 'life on Mars', as you will be disappointed. Unfortunately there isn't that much (maybe half?)

The portions of this book that are based on the mission simulation are absolutely fascinating! The pre-mission, the recruitment process, the actual time spent in the dome - fantastic! I only wish there'd been so many more pages written about it. That is what I picked this book up for.

A great amount of research has gone into writing this book, and most of it is pretty interesting, but, it is a bit messy. It jumps from thought to thought, going off on different tangents, often changing randomly between paragraphs without any warning - suddenly you're just reading something else and onto another topic entirely.

This book was clearly written while the author was grieving. Her brother's poor health and passing is mentioned a great deal, and I just didn't really understand how it 'fit' with this book and the subject matter.. I skipped these pages, along with several other sections, as they just weren't for me.

A lot of this book wasn't what I was expecting and not what I came for, so I was personally left feeling disappointed. However, the parts that I did like were highly enjoyable.

Enjoyed this memoir in essays of being a crew member of the HI-SEAS project, a NASA Mars simulation. Two other things I would recommend for readers are Meg Howry’s novel The Wanderers and the podcast The Habitat both about the same subject. I especially found the author’s observations on isolation to be particularly poignant during the Covid-19 pandemic. If anything, I think the publisher should consider putting this one in the hands of readers sooner than it’s currently scheduled release date.