The Thunder and Lightning Series

This collection contains three novels from John Varley's Mars saga: Red Thunder, Red Lightning, and Rolling Thunder. In Red Thunder, as Chinese and US spacecraft race to be the first to land on Mars, a former astronaut, his cousin, and four teens from Florida compete to reach the Red Planet first using an inventive new power source capable of getting them there in three days. Red Lightning follows Ray Garcia-Strickland, son of one of the first men on Mars. Tired of the Red Planet and its gravity-dependent tourists, he gets his chance at interplanetary adventure when an unknown object strikes Earth and causes a massive tsunami. In Rolling Thunder, Podkayne, a Martian navy lieutenant and daughter of Ray Garcia-Strickland, is stationed on one of Jupiter's moons. While pursuing her dream of becoming a singer, disaster strikes and she is placed in suspended animation. She awakens ten years later to face her greatest challenge and humanity's as well.