The Mars Water War: A Thriller of Scarcity and Survival on the Red Planet

Elizabeth Campbell is a science fiction author and aerospace engineer whose work sits at the intersection of technical realism and human drama. She holds a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her research focused on life support systems for long-duration space missions—work that directly informs the technical infrastructure of *The Mars Water War*. Before turning to fiction full-time, she spent eight years at SpaceX as a systems engineer on the Starship program, where she contributed to the design of in-space propulsion and propellant transfer systems that will one day enable crewed missions to Mars.

Campbell's short fiction has appeared in *Analog Science Fiction and Fact*, *Clarkesworld*, and *Lightspeed*, and her work has been nominated twice for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. Her debut novel, *The Mars Water War*, draws on her engineering background and her deep reading in planetary science, hydrology, and political theory to create a thriller that is as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally gripping. She is known for her ability to make complex technical subjects accessible without sacrificing accuracy, a skill she developed writing technical documentation for spacecraft systems before transitioning to fiction.

A frequent speaker at science fiction conventions and space industry conferences, Campbell has delivered keynote addresses at the International Astronautical Congress, the Mars Society Convention, and the World Science Fiction Convention. Her essays on the future of space settlement have been published in *Wired*, *Aeon*, and *The Space Review*. She is an advocate for evidence-based space policy and serves on the advisory board of the Space Settlement Institute, where she helps shape research priorities for off-world habitat design.

Campbell lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her wife and two children, and maintains an amateur radio station that she uses to communicate with astronauts on the International Space Station as part of the ARISS program. She is currently working on the sequel to *The Mars Water War*, which follows the political aftermath of the colony's water crisis as new factions emerge to contest the future of Martian governance. When not writing, she can be found hiking in the Rocky Mountains, where the sound of running water serves as a constant reminder of the resource too many people take for granted.