# A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

11 Hacker News commenters recommended A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a realistic, clear-eyed look at the many hard challenges of building permanent Mars settlements, written with humor. Common caveat: critics say it strawmans settlers and misses their motives.

## Why people recommend it

- Realistic view of settlement challenges (4 comments): "I thought it set forward a realistic set of challenges we have to solve and experiments we have to do before building anything more than a research outpost on Mars." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811146)) "It's written by two giant space nerds who are nonetheless clear eyed on the many, many, many challenges to creating permanent space settlements of any kind." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49719427)) "A useful book on why self-sustaining settlements on Luna, Mars, or earth orbit are pretty much hopeless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46093475))
- Strong argument against Mars colonies (4 comments): "If you want to get depressed about all the problems with trying to colonize Mars, I recommend A City on Mars" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809826)) "A useful book on why self-sustaining settlements on Luna, Mars, or earth orbit are pretty much hopeless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46093475)) "is a pretty damning dissection of the whole concept of Martian colonies" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062608))
- Clearly covers colonization risks (2 comments): "It's written by two giant space nerds who are nonetheless clear eyed on the many, many, many challenges to creating permanent space settlements of any kind." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49719427)) "covers the risk pretty well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46817382))

## What people warn about

- Strawmans and misrepresents Mars settlers (4 comments): "A City on Mars made me want to throw the book at the window so many times. Building and tearing down straw-men right and left." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46099536)) "was a really badly researched book, full of errors, that completely misrepresented the would-be Mars settler position" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095326)) "Neither the Weinersmiths nor you seem to understand the motivations of people that actually want to settle Mars." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128186))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter](https://hackerapproved.com/p/g-del-escher-bach.md): 47 recommend
- [Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thinking-fast-and-slow.md): 17 recommend
- [Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thinking-in-systems.md): 17 recommend
- [The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins](https://hackerapproved.com/p/selfish-gene.md): 14 recommend
- [Cosmos by Carl Sagan](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cosmos.md): 13 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1984881744?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9781984881748) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith", https://hackerapproved.com/p/a-city-on-mars/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).