Arc of the Universe

Carrie Davenport, a renowned constitutional law professor, has been given the career opportunity of a lifetime. Project Mars, the brainchild of a billionaire tech tycoon, has ambitious plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars. And Project Mars selected her—a Black, queer, publicity-shy professor in North Carolina—to design a system of government for the colony.

Carrie leaps into researching how to craft a suitable constitution for space. But an incident one evening shatters her academic bubble: Carrie is stopped by the police in a case of mistaken identity and subjected to police violence. Worse still, a video of the physical encounter explodes online, further igniting her anger and mortification.  Thrust in the limelight, Carrie must decide whether to speak up—against the police brutality she endured, but also race issues within the tech bro culture of Project Mars and a colony that will be ninety-five percent white. Suddenly, American democracy doesn’t seem like a shining beacon to carry into space. Can Carrie regain enough faith in herself and in society to craft the “government of the future” and prevent the prejudices of Earth from tainting the constitution for Mars?