Life on Mars

Life on Mars is a world of domes and vacuum-sealed, highspeed railways, shielded from a too-thin atmosphere and a too-harsh yet too-distant sun. It is a world of spaceports, underground apartments (called “holes”), and massive hydroponic farms. Humanity dug deep into the soil and rock when they reached their second home, crafting underground cities with UV sunlamps strung high overhead, using the soil as insulation and radiation shielding in lieu of a planetary magnetosphere. The clear insulating ceramic used by the earliest settlers to construct their walls and holes is starting to scratch and gray in the oldest settlements, warping and bubbling from the constant heat of humanity warring against the chill of the Martian atmosphere. Few on the Red Planet have much in the way of luxuries, from printed books to personal amenities. Luxuries are for public consumption or private expenditures outside the home.
Mars’ large population centers required a standardized language of military and government, and even today many Martians default to English. Immigrants from Eastern and South Asia, the Americas, and other parts of Earth in the first and second generations led to a riotous variety of accents, maintained with characteristic Martian pride and equally characteristic stubbornness. It’s not unusual to meet a Martian with a strong Texan (especially from the Mariner Valley) or British-English accent, no matter their apparent Earther ethnic heritage. Martian farms grow crops in soil carefully cultured from dirt and organisms drawn from Earth, either naturally selected over hundreds of years or otherwise meticulously crafted in planetside laboratories. They’re fed by melted water from deep under the surface or piped in from the polar ice caps, but this is a paltry harvest compared to hydration-rich Ganymede and Europa. Few Martians eat completely fresh food, the majority being potatoes, mushrooms, and varieties of coffee. Most eat meat grown in vats, along with varieties of vegetable paste resembling hummus. Their lasagnas are spread between layers of fake grains and smothered in fake tomato sauce and fake cheese, an evening’s repast to go with the morning’s breakfast of fake eggs. Martians visiting Earth, Ganymede, or Europa take the opportunity to gorge. Real food still tends to be dehydrated and full of preservatives. Despite this, Martians enjoy restaurants with some regularity, gorging themselves on a dizzyingly ethnic palate from a planet many have never seen and many more despise: Thai hot pots, Italian pasta, Japanese ramen.
Gone are the ramshackle bars of centuries past, fit only for entertainment screens and potato vodka. On Mars today, teahouses with elegant décor evoke old Parisian cafés. Martian hotels have wall fountains, a luxury unimagined by previous generations. Martians define opulence and excess by the cultures they’ve left behind; to their minds, the difference between Martians and Earthers is that the former work hard and deserve their trappings of wealth, while the latter are squander money on the lazy and undeserving.