A City on Mars wins the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith have won the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize for A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, published in the UK by Particular Books. The winner was announced at the Royal Society in London on 24 October 2024.

The book examines the practical, medical, legal and social problems of establishing human settlements in space, and is illustrated throughout. The winners receive £25,000, and each of the other five shortlisted authors £2,500.

The judging panel was chaired by Professor John Hutchinson, and included the novelist Eleanor Catton, the journalist Alison Flood, the mathematician and broadcaster Bobby Seagull and the physicist Jess Wade. The Weinersmiths are the second married couple to win the prize, after Alan Walker and Pat Shipman in 1997.

A City on Mars is a sceptical book on a subject that tends to attract enthusiasm, and its win suggests that judges value writers who test popular assumptions rather than simply share them. It is also a reminder that humour and illustration need not count against a serious science book.

Source: Royal Society: A City on Mars announced as winner of the 2024 prize.