The book Beyond Tranquillity A Martian Odyssey

An ambitious voyage into the science, courage and human cost of reaching another world.

  • Victor Crockett
  • UK Publishing House, 2026
  • eBook · Paperback · Hardcover
Beyond Tranquillity by Victor Crockett. The cover shows a vast starship hovering over a red Martian canyon as a line of explorers walks beneath it.

03The novel

Beyond the known.

An ambitious voyage into the science, courage and human cost of reaching another world.

Half a century after EAGLE and CONDOR were lost in the void, PEGASUS carries not a handful of astronauts but hundreds of explorers to the Red Planet. Told week by week across six months of 2075 and 2076, the story moves between the Martian wilderness and a manhunt on Earth for the preacher known only as the Prophet, a man determined that the mission will never return.

  • 01 · The science

    Engineered, not imagined

    Space elevators, linear accelerators and contra-rotating carousels, worked out by an author who studied aeronautics and ship science.

  • 02 · The people

    Hundreds, far from home

    Half a year in each other's company, and the human frailties that doomed the missions before them.

  • 03 · The threat

    A hunt on Earth

    A fundamentalist preacher who believes mankind should never leave the Earth, and the search to find him in time.

Author
Victor Crockett
Publisher
UK Publishing House
Published
2026
Editions
eBook · Paperback · Hardcover
Genre
Science fiction

Written by an engineer who spent thirty years in the Royal Navy, from minesweepers to naval intelligence.

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Coming sooN

Published by UK Publishing House

From the mission log

  • Bon voyage
  • A walk in the park
  • Captain's dinner party
  • Fire, fire, fire
  • Arrival: Mars
  • Landfall 70° E, 30° S
  • Mars Base One
  • South Pole
  • Inca City
  • Cydonia, Face of Mars
  • Valles Marineris
  • Olympus Mons
  • Footsteps in the sand
  • Parklands

04The journey

The journey, in three worlds.

Earth, where it begins. Mars, where it is going. And the danger that follows it all the way.

  • A space elevator tether rising from the Earth, with a ring-shaped station partway up, above clouds and ocean.

    Where it begins

    A thread to the stars

    A carbon-nanotube thread fifty thousand kilometres long climbs from a ground station on the equator to a counterweight beyond geostationary orbit. From Easter Island, mission control watches every step.

    Ground station
    The equator
    Mission control
    Easter Island
  • A six-wheeled exploration rover on the rust-red Martian surface, with tall canyon cliffs behind it.

    Where it is going

    Out from Mars Base One

    From the edge of the Hellas Basin, rover crews push out across the planet: the South Pole, Valles Marineris, the Face of Mars at Cydonia, and the slopes of Olympus Mons.

    Mars Base One
    42.4° S · 70.5° E
    Rovers
    12
    Excursions
    17
  • A man in silhouette stands at a tall window at dusk, looking out at a lit capitol dome across the city.

    What follows it

    A war of belief

    Not every danger lies in space. A preacher known as the Prophet believes mankind was never meant to leave the Earth, and his followers will go to almost any length to see PEGASUS fail.

    The Prophet
    Missouri
    The search
    Who among them?