When Lizzie Choi receives a message from her brother telling her that he’s dead, she assumes it’s a joke. Lizzie, an employee of the powerful Everlight Corporation, already has to live under the cloud of her mother’s misdemeanours and could do without her brother, Shiv, adding further complications. By the time she realises that this is no joke and comes to understand what is being demanded of her, she knows she’s in trouble. The last thing she wants to do is travel to Mars and take Shiv’s place in a criminal undertaking, especially one of such magnitude and danger, but… The pace never lets up in Jaine Fenn’s The Martian Job, as pulp action SF collides with high concept science fiction, paying homage to classic movie The Italian Job along the way. This may be Jaine’s finest work to date. “Liberty Bird”, the last piece she wrote for NewCon Press, won a BSFA Award. Who knows what The Martian Job might achieve?