Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I really wanted to love this book, but found the structure and narrative style very challenging. I did not enjoy this read unfortunately and felt that the structure let down what could have been an interesting and much more engaging narrative.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I actually learnt some things while reading Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars! Neat premise and an enjoyable read.

I did find once upon a time I lived on Mars to be very interesting and a very engaging storyline, however I also found that the story did sometimes go astray from the plot. However I still enjoyed this book

This is a really interesting recounting of an experiment whereby people attempted to simulate what it might be like to go to Mars. However, while there was lots of fascinating anecdotes, the structure didn’t work so well for me and I found it quite jarring to read.

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crewmates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Once Upon A Time I Lived on Mars, Greene recounts her experience during her HI-SEAS mission, all while contemplating humanity's urge to explore beyond Earth. Her collections of essays draw upon humans relationships with food, the able-bodied astronaut and her brother's disability, her relationship with her wife, and what kind of wisdom humanity may bring to Mars in the future.

Although I did find the book interesting overall, I found the flow to be very jarring. It felt as if Greene wasn't quite sure what to focus on in her essays, and at times I lost focus. However, I learned some things I otherwise would not have known if I hadn't have read this book, and I found the points about women being less expensive to send to space than men, and the reasoning behind that, very interesting.

A lovely little book that I will still recommend to my space-loving friends.

I found Once Upon A Time I Lived On Mars to be eally interesting and engaging, though it did sometimes seem to stray from a cohesive structure. I would like to have learnt more about day-to-day life within the geodesic dome, but I did really enjoy the discussion of other topics as well. There's a good blend of disciplines, pop culture, and science, in this book - and I perhaps found the more introspective parts most enriching to read.

As a series of 12 related essays, the structure of this book is quite loose and meandering, all moving around the focal point of Greene's time in NASA's HI-SEAS project. I think this could be a little off-putting to some but I really enjoyed how meandering it was. It gives Greene the opportunity to talk about a lot of things about space travel/exploration and the history of it that wouldn't necessarily have come up if she'd stuck strictly to her own experiences, but I really appreciated that they were in there. Especially when someone thinks highly of the work NASA and other organisations like that do, it would be easy to sugarcoat it, too.

One example that really stands out to me is her discussion of the people paid by NASA pay to take part in essentially 'lying down for months' studies, and the socio-economic factors that go into who would agree to do that. Likewise, her discussion of the "ideal" astronaut and all the ways society has played into that, and how different space travel and exploration would look if we'd never been tied to those kind of arbitrary ideals. I'm really interested in the history of space exploration but not hugely knowledgeable, so this kind of broad, meandering primer was really great for me personally.

I've always thought of astronauts and astronaut-adjacent people as really interesting but honestly probably a bit unrelatable to someone like me (fascinated with space but terrible in an emergency, deathly afraid of even the regular sort of flying, and not from a science background at all) and honestly I was probably more drawn to Greene's book where others haven't tempted me purely because she's LGBTQ, and it was definitely great to read something like this by someone like that. Despite that, after finishing this, I'm really interesting in reading more of this sort of book (in particular Scott Kelly's book, which Greene mentions quite a few times.) which I definitely didn't expect!

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A mix between science writing and general life experience, Kate Greene manages to weave advice for everyday living with an account of her four month experience in a Mars-like habitat in Hawai’i.

The writing was very readable and the scientific aspects were not too complicated, meaning that I didn’t have to look anything up or feel lost at any point. Greene clearly has journalistic experience and I think that suited the style of the book. I absolutely love learning about space and NASA’s work so the habitat-based portions were perfection to me.

However, I found that the mix of the experiment with Kate’s everyday life to be unbalanced. I liked the discussions of scientific developments but found that towards the end, these became financially focused and concentrated on private companies such as Space X, which I’m personally not as interested in.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book but I would have preferred a slightly different focus, more based on the Mars habitat experiment and the surrounding science, rather than billionaires who want to build a space-based legacy.

3 out of 5 stars!

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
I thought this book would be a lot more interesting and exciting than it actually was. It had some good bits but there are long sections of dull and dry material that feels as though one is reading from a textbook.
An OK read.

Who doesn’t love a bit of Space exploration? The idea of human habitation on Mars is such an intriguing and interesting prospect, and the research going on into how humans may manage such a feat is beyond amazing.

I loved reading about the authors experiences on her 4 month long habitation on ‘fake mars’ (or the Hawaiin volcano Mauna Loa), living the life of extreme solitude and difficultly on the HI-SEAS project. The author also touched on her own life throughout, making it a very personable account which was great to read.

I really enjoyed learning about the difficulties, pitfalls and potential struggles of life on another planet, and aside from the obvious of life-support and fitting humans into a place they aren’t designed to fit, I never really thought of the smaller things such as menu fatigue and the struggles of enjoyment of eating on psychology and overall health, for example. The chapter on Astro-gastronomy was great and hearing about the science as well as the experimental results carried out on the project was brilliant. How to feed people in space? What would they eat? All intriguing questions covered.

Boredom as well! Boredom through lack of new stimuli and monotony too is a potential plague to any space traveller. Who’d have though getting ‘bored’ in space could be a thing? So many things the book covered that I didn’t foresee.

The psychology of space flight and it’s effects is a mind blowing and incredibly interesting area of science as not only do we not know about it in abundance on earth, but apply it to space flight and space living and were in unknown territory! There’s the difference in food, the same monotony of your environment, limitations of social interactions as well as being cut off from your earthly norms. Having an insight into such things from this book was definitely an eye opener and really interesting to read.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and it would appeal to many who have often thought about what it may be like to live on a different planet, and what the difficulties might be along the way. Really interesting!

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is based on the author's experience of a 4-month long 'Mars' mission completed in Hawaii in 2012. Her experiences on the mission are used as a springboard for explorations of many topics, such as space travel, notions of home and ability/ disability. The author has a lot to say, and really interesting quotes and insights, particularly relating to space exploration. However, the essay structure was a little too free-floating, resulting in circling around topics and at times, even repeating herself. I think a tighter structure for this work, based more firmly around her Mars experiences, would have resulted in a more satisfying read.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a series of essays by Kate Greene detailing her time spent on a simulated Mars mission in 2013. At times extremely interesting it provides some insights to life within this simulated environment. The structure of this book I feel lets it down a bit, as they are individual essays the topics jump about randomly and make it hard to really engage. I would have loved some more detail on the day to day life she experienced while in the experiment, and more of a traditional novel structure would help make this an easier read. Overall interesting however.

This book is a memoir by Kate Greene, about the simulated Mars mission that she took part in during 2013. She lived in a geodesic dome for four months, living as if she was on Mars, with a crew of scientists. The book is not chronological. Instead, it is a series of essays about her experience, each chapter focusing on a different topic or theme. Greene has a friendly tone that is very readable. The science isn't too complicated and the focus is on the more human side of things.

Reading the introduction, where Greene talks about seeing the same people, eating the same food, seeing the same view, every day, made me think about quarantine. It was interesting to be reading this book at this time, while so many of us are experiencing a similar thing of being locked in with the same people.

I found the background facts interesting, although I already knew a lot of them as I read a lot about space exploration. I found the psychology angle most interesting. I took less from the more philosophical musings, but that's because I don't find that kind of thing particularly interesting. If that is your thing then this book would be a great read. I did find a few parts of the book a little disjointed and hard to follow, but overall I enjoyed reading it.

Greene talks about what the experiment means for potential future Mars missions, but she also talks about what she took from the experience personally, and how it relates to her own life. I found the discussion of the potential for disabled people as astronauts particularly interesting, as someone with disabilities. The idea that some disabilities could actually be beneficial for space flight was not something I had considered, but perhaps in the future disabled people will be a vital part of the conversation around space exploration. Greene also highlights how even completely able and typical bodies need adaptations for space, showing that context for disability is everything. It made me think about how astronauts returning to earth often experience symptoms of orthostatic intolerance, something I experience on a daily basis as someone with PoTS. What could we learn about bodies in space from looking at disabled people on earth, and what could we learn about treating certain illnesses from looking at astronauts in space? The possibilities are endless, and fascinating.

On a final note, just as a heads up, there is a chapter which briefly discusses the use of guinea pigs in scientific research which, as a rodent lover, I did find difficult to read, although it was interesting.

Overall this book is an interesting read with some unique points of view, well worth reading for anyone interested in space exploration.

This is a meandering collection of thoughts from a person who spent four months in the Mars simulation habitat in Hawaii. If you want an organised story about the selection, preparation and details of the mission, this is not the book you want. It is broken up into random categories or whatever she was thinking at the time, some things to do with the mission and others not. Some interesting tidbits about the mission keeps you going, but you don't actually get a complete picture about it.

This was a fascinating insight into the land based research undertaken to find out more about the effects of long term space missions. Greene drew on her experiences, literature & conversations with astronauts to create a fascinating read that complements many astronaut biographies

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars has whetted my appetite for space-themed non-fiction. In twelve essays, Greene discusses everything from food to isolation to space funding, pulling material from her own experiences and other literature to create a very readable book.

A career in science journalism aside, Greene’s credibility comes from taking part in the 2013 Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS). For four months, Greene lived in isolation with five other pseudo-astronauts on the slopes of Mauna Loa, guinea pigs to any number of experiments which hoped to fine-tune preparations for living in Space.

I admit, starting out, I was expecting one coherent volume on Greene’s experiences here, with particular emphasis on the importance of food and food preparation on long-haul space missions. I was imagining Mark Watney eating nothing but potatoes and ketchup in The Martian, and Elma York baking on her way to Mars, and wanted to know what the reality was likely to be like.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the book was a series of essays upon a theme. Part of the problem may have been that I was reading an ARC copy without finalised formatting, meaning that I missed the cues that later readers might see. However, part of the problem was also that Greene has an erratic style of writing. Without any clear linking language, she jumps from one topic to another within chapters/essays, something I found both confusing and frustrating.

That aside, I was interested in what Greene had to say. She’s collected some fascinating material on topics I’d never thought to research and has some interesting opinions and insights into experiences we all share and structures we usually take for granted. Of particular interest to me was her discussion of the standard astronaut. It had never occurred to me that, logically, an all-female astronaut crew makes more sense that an all-male crew, or that an astronaut without legs actually has advantages over an astronaut with legs. As each topic was only briefly touched upon, and only the tastiest morsels presented, it’s left me eager to seek out some of her source material for more in-depth reading myself. First port of call I think has to be Scott Kelly’s Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

Unfortunately for Greene, I think she’s brought this book out at the wrong time. Had this book been published in 2019 I think it would have gotten a bette reception than it will now. After all, we’ve all had almost a year of some sort of isolation with Coronavirus, and yet the book mentions it only twice. A lost opportunity really, as the public can neither take examples from Greene’s book on how to cope, nor read how Greene feels the public’s experiences might have compared to her own earlier experiences.

I would recommend this book to those who, like me, are interested in how science fiction compares to the real thing but who don’t want to be weighed down by a doorstop of a detailed manual. It gives you a taste of a number of topics and provides the source material should you want to read more.

I found parts of this to be really interesting. I wanted there to be more about everyday life during the the experiment and how each crew member coped and felt. I was not a fan of the writing style. I found it hard to keep reading in places. Overall it is and interesting and informative read.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I found parts of this fascinating, but on the whole there was to much introspection, even though some of that was quite interesting, eg why it makes sense to send women into space rather than men and the attitudes towards an all female crew, when an all male crew is not considered out of the ordinary. But, on the whole, I found the style not particularly engaging - it didn't live up to it's title I'm afraid.

In 2012, nearly seven hundred people answered an advert looking for analog astronauts - a small group prepared to spend four months isolated together, living as they would on Mars. This would be the first mission in the new Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS). Funded by NASA, it's main aim was to investigate whether providing astronauts with shelf-stable ingredients and allowing them to cook would prevent the menu fatigue and weight loss seen during long-duration space missions.

For Kate Greene, it was an opportunity not to be missed. As a child, Greene dreamed of going to space camp, but it was beyond her family’s resources. Determined to qualify as an astronaut, she dived into a scientific education. Life, however, had other ideas, and Greene became a science writer instead. Now she was to become an analog astronaut, living her dream without the pesky inconvenience of having to blast into space.

There’s something quite romantic about the idea of tucking yourself away and pretending to be on Mars for a while, but the reality is a lot more prosaic. HI-SEAS is a geodesic dome built on the side of a volcano, a location chosen for its similarities to the geology of the Moon and Mars. There’s no fresh food. Power and water are both limited. Personal hygiene mostly relies on wet wipes, and the composting toilets don’t always work. Analog astronauts surrender their mobile phones and endure limited contact with their loved ones. For a Mars mission like this one, communications pass through a twenty-minute delay. Oh, and if you want to pop outside, you have to put on a “spacesuit”.

The idea was simple. The crew would alternate between eating long-life ready meals and using long-life ingredients to cook for themselves.

Greene grew up in a family where food was fuel, and cooking and cleaning up after were unavoidable chores. The book suggests she spent more time people-watching in the habitat than she did thinking about food. She does talk about using egg powder to make herself a French omelette, on lazy Sunday mornings when she was alone in the kitchen.

The mission was designed by two scientists – Kim Binstead and Jean Hunter. Binstead had been an analog astronaut herself, on a four-month mission at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in the Canadian Arctic. When a Canadian crew member got homesick, they decided to try and cheer him up by making poutine, a classic Canadian dish of French fries, gravy and cheese.

How on Earth do you do that, with shelf-stable ingredients? They had some dehydrated scalloped potatoes, which they rehydrated, and then fried, and then baked. Their habitat included a cheese-making kit and powdered milk. It took them all day, but they managed an analog poutine that passed muster and had the desired effect. It was this experience that led Binstead to develop the first HI-SEAS mission. If it seems like a no-brainer to let astronauts cook, then consider the trade-offs. Crew time is the big one, but cooking also uses more water and power. Does the uptick in crew morale balance that out?

I’ve been a HI-SEAS fan since I first discovered the project, long after this first mission ended. The first run didn’t include a garden, as any fresh food would disrupt the study. One crew member did try growing some sprouts. Greene, worried about potential digestive issues, only ate one.

Greene uses her HI-SEAS experience as the jumping-off point for her book, using it to explore the history of isolation, diversity (or lack thereof) in the space programme, and more personal musings about her life outside the habitat, and life on Earth generally. I preferred the mission-related content, but there are some fascinating bits and pieces about Shannon Lucid (who spent six months on Mir) and Scott Kelly and his year-long ISS mission.

All-in-all, Once Upon a Time I Lived in Mars is an interesting insight into HI-SEAS and analog missions generally. It’s being published at an opportune moment, when we are experiencing confinement and isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Greene’s insights into boredom and how to get along when you can’t escape your companions will stand us in good stead as we come to terms with a future in which that might be a regular occurrence.