When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.The cover of Korell’s “The Second World”. | Credit: Cover image by Books Forward, background by PixabayWhat happens when humanity finally builds a civilization on another planet, and immediately repeats its old mistakes? That question drives ‘The Second World’, the sharp, satirical debut from writer Jake Korell. Set against the rise of a breakaway Martian nation, the story follows Flip Buchanan, son of the colony’s most powerful leader, as he navigates two chaotic decades of scientific breakthroughs, political theater, and cultural growing pains on the Red Planet.Korell grounds his humor in real near-future science. His Mars isn’t a distant fantasy but a logical extension of the conversations happening right now in space exploration, from private-sector expansion to the ethics of off-world settlement. By keeping the technology plausible and the human behavior all too familiar, Korell creates a world that feels both futuristic and uncomfortably recognizable.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe result is a story that treats space exploration seriously while embracing the absurdity of human nature. Blending the scientific accessibility of Andy Weir with the satirical edge of Vonnegut, Korell imagines a Mars shaped as much by physics as by politics, ego, and ambition.In our Q&A below, he discusses the science, the satire, and the real policy debates that inspired ‘The Second World,’ which is available in Feburary 2026.Space: ‘The Second World’ uses Mars as both a literal and symbolic frontier. What drew you to Mars specifically, and how did you balance real space-science plausibility with satire and speculative fiction?Korell: I’ve always loved anything related to outer space. It activates the farthest reaches of our imagination—the vastness, the weird physics, the unknown. The future has that same built-in sense of wonder, the same limitless possibilities. But in storytelling, if you push too far ahead or veer too far away from what we’ve actually observed in the universe, things can become abstract and less relatable. A near-future Mars felt like the perfect middle ground, especially since people are already making plans to colonize. It’s a whole other planet, but still our next-door neighbor—relatively speaking. Building a world on the Red Planet gave me immense creative freedom while keeping everything tethered to our own experience…My goal was to keep the world scientifically plausible, then bend it just enough to make it funny. Something that might sound absurd to us now, but would feel completely normal to the characters living in that reality.Space.com: Your story imagines a newly sovereign Martian nation grappling with political identity, culture, and legacy. How did real conversations in space policy, colonization ethics, and planetary nationalism influence your worldbuilding?Korell: Worldbuilding has always been my favorite part of the writing process, and I love taking real issues from our world and weaving them into a place that’s entirely invented. When you start looking at space policy and colonization ethics, you realize how unsettled everything still is. No one “owns” Mars or the Moon. Even on Earth, we have borders and land because we say so, and the authority only comes from the ability to enforce it. Things are more nuanced now, but that’s still the foundation everything rests on. And in early America, colonizers took land from Native peoples simply because they could.My Mars colony quickly emerged as the perfect allegory for the thirteen colonies, and the void between planets just became a much, much bigger Atlantic Ocean. The pattern was familiar. In colonization, first come the explorers, then the investors, then the politicians. A SpaceX-like corporation will almost certainly reach Mars first—acting as both explorer and i …
