Martin Gibson, a famous science fiction author, is travelling to Mars, as a guest of the crew of the spaceship Ares.

After arriving at Space Station One, in the orbit of Earth, from which all interplanetary journeys start, he begins the three-month trip to Mars.

The youngest crew member, Jimmy Spencer, who is still in training to be an astronaut, is assigned the task of answering his questions about the technology of space flight, and they become friends.

Gibson meets the Chief Executive of Mars, Warren Hadfield, and Mayor Whittaker, who run the colony from the base at Port Lowell.

He discusses the future of the colony with Hadfield, who is keen to make Mars as self-sufficient as possible, given the vast distance that materials have to come from Earth.

Hadfield reveals that scientists have been working on "Project Dawn", which involves the ignition of the moon Phobos and its use as a second “sun” for Mars.

It will burn for at least one thousand years and the extra heat, together with mass production of the oxygen-generating plants, will eventually – it is hoped – make the Martian atmosphere breathable for humans.

J. Francis McComas, writing in The New York Times, declared Sands of Mars to be "a careful, thoughtful projection of the problems of government.

The book was published later as part of The Space Trilogy, an omnibus of three of Clarke's earlier works which also includes Islands in the Sky and Earthlight.

A city on Mars named Port Lowell is also mentioned by Clarke in his 1955 short story "Refugee" and The Lost Worlds of 2001.

In the case of Phobos - tiny and mostly rock - Clarke proposes an imaginary "meson resonance reaction"[5] that has recently been discovered.