As someone who lives 2,800 miles away from his elderly mother, I know what it’s like when something bad happens and you’re too far away to help. But I can’t even imagine what it would be like if my mom were 50,000,000 miles away because I was on Mars and she was still here on Earth. Such is the premise of Peter Cawdron’s new sci-fi novel Retrograde (hardcover, digital)…well, except that it’s not about my mama.