The Sirens of Mars cover art

The Sirens of Mars

Searching for Life on Another World

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Sirens of Mars

By: Sarah Stewart Johnson
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

As a new wave of interplanetary exploration launches in summer 2020, a talented young planetary scientist charts our centuries-old obsession with Mars.

Mars - bewilderingly empty, coated in red dust - is an unlikely place to pin our hopes of finding life elsewhere. And yet, right now multiple spacecraft are circling, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium and Mare Sirenum - on the brink, perhaps, of a discovery that would inspire humankind as much as any in our history.

With poetic precision and grace, Sarah Stewart Johnson traces the evocative history of our explorations of Mars. She interlaces her personal journey as a scientist with tales of other seekers - from Galileo to William Herschel to Carl Sagan - who have scoured this enigmatic planet for signs of life and transformed it in our understanding from a distant point of light into a complex world. Ultimately, she shows how its story is also a story about Earth: it is a foil, a mirror, a tell-tale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings to find - if we're lucky - that we're not alone.

©2020 Sarah Stewart Johnson (P)2020 Penguin Audio Astronomy Astronomy & Space Science History History & Philosophy Science Solar System Mars Interstellar

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Space 2069 cover art
The Hidden Life of Ice cover art
Alexander Hamilton's Guide to Life cover art
To You We Shall Return cover art
My Reading Life cover art
Life on Earth cover art
Life in a Jar cover art
Cosmos cover art
Better Living Through Birding cover art
The Planets cover art
My Life with the Chimpanzees cover art
Ishmael cover art
The Last Man Who Knew Everything cover art
Oceanworlds cover art
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes cover art
The Moon cover art

Critic reviews

"This elegantly crafted book conveys what it's like to be a young scientist involved in the quest." (Lord Martin Rees, astronomer royal)

"The inside story of the exploration of Mars and the search for life there." (Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell)

"A celebration of human curiosity, passion and perseverance. Superb in its storytelling, majestic in its vision, The Sirens of Mars will give readers a new appreciation for the preciousness of life in the cosmos." (Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams)
All stars
Most relevant  
Entrancingly insightful overview of the desperate search for the merest sniff of life on Mars, present or departed, beautifully read by Cassandra Campbell.

Captivatingly metaphorical melancholy

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting book with the exploration of Mars at its centre but also orbited by the authors journey into science and her involvement in the Mars programme and also her journey as a woman.

Engaging and thought provoking especially around the subject of life on Mars and how it may present itself.

Narrator was calm and focused in her narration.

Planetary science and part memoir

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.