Also this is my first story of any length and feel free to write a critique. I've self-published it via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing just because it was easy and free, but without any promotion it's not likely to sell much.
I could only critique after I've finished reading it. If only there was still a good pulp SF market, or even just a healthy SF market. Most of the 'new' writers I know came to the fopre some time last century and thelast time I looked book store shelves were still filled with 'door stop' fantasy world trilogies and heavy looking SF 'series'. Anything we write now about colonising Mars has Kim Stanley Robinson's colour themed Mars trilogy to live up to and surpass, somehow.
I just downloaded a sample of "Red Mars" on my Kindle and will give it a look see tonight. I stopped reading much sci fi, besides Vonnegut, by 1980 or so and even missed most cyberpunk. By that time I had devoured everything I could get my hands on, though, so I think I'm still grounded in the, um, classic classics so to speak.
If I had a Kindle I would be tempted to pay for that download.
I appreciate that. 