It's only a short 225-million kilometer, nine-month trip to the Martian biosphere in author’s satirical sci-fi “The Second World” (Feb 24, 2026). Debut author Jake Korell takes readers to a newly sovereign Mars—where bureaucracy, ego, and generational divides run as deep as the Martian ice. When Flip Buchanan, the reluctant son of the most powerful man on the Red Planet, stumbles through two tumultuous decades of alien discoveries, killer clones, and interplanetary conflict, he discovers that building a new world isn't so different from ruining the old one. 

After a decade of working in Hollywood on shows like Arrested Development and a project with Danny DeVito and Jeff Goldblum, Korell dusted off an old TV pilot and adapted it into his first novel. The result is a darkly funny, irreverent satire about American history, political and media spectacle, and the human urge to make a finite life matter in an infinite universe. The Second World blends the wit and worldbuilding of Andy Weir and John Scalzi with the biting social commentary of Kurt Vonnegut and Matt Haig. It's a speculative coming-of-age story for our era of misinformation, memes, and misplaced idealism—equal parts hilarious and heartfelt. 

More about the book: Mars has declared its independence from Earth. But founding a new nation takes more than a flag, an anthem, and naming a donkey the national animal. In this satirical space epic about power, legacy, and culture, The Second World needles the myth of progress and legacy with humor, heart, and a little bit of sci-fi madness. As Mars fights to define itself, Flip Buchanan learns that the hardest part of independence—personal or planetary—is figuring out what to do with it.