Cover image of "Detour," a novel about a mission to Saturn

It’s 2031. Tech billionaire John Ward is financing a two-year mission to Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. Convinced that Earth will eventually become unlivable and that Mars is inhospitable and impractical for colonization, he has settled on Titan as the last best hope to ensure the future of our species. But Ward has also launched an independent presidential campaign and has attracted unwelcome attention from the public. In keeping with the violent tenor of the times, a pair of assassins approach him on a Washington, DC street. There, an off-duty veteran police officer named Ryan Crane is on his way out for a cup of coffee. Instinctively, he leaps on the gunman, saving Ward’s life. And that makes him famous—and a shoe-in for a ticket on the mission to Titan. This is the set-up in Jeff Rake and Rob Hart’s explosive science fiction thriller, Detour.

“A near-future mind-bender”

All told, Ward’s ship, Starblazer, houses a crew of six: Astronauts Mike Seaver, Della Jameson, and Alonso Cardona, and three civilians, Courtney Smith, Padma Singh, and Ryan Crane. Smith, known as Stitch, is a scruffy-looking young graffiti artist who won a nationwide lottery to join the crew. “The tattered jeans and the retro Jordans and the graffitied T-shirt made him “look like a kid who is also a criminal.” By contrast, “Singh is a brilliant astrophysicist and the world’s leading expert on the Titan colonization plan.” The strange dynamics of this motley collection of people hold out the promise of gripping drama, and the authors don’t disappoint. The publisher describes Detour as “a near-future mind-bender that blends space-flight realism with eerie psychological mystery,” and, boy, have they got that right. Just wait until the Starblazer reaches Titan, and all hell breaks loose.

Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart (2026) 290 pages ★★★★★

Photo of Saturn's moon Titan, the target in this novel about a mission to Saturn
Titan as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. Image: NASA – Space.com

Why Titan? Why not Mars?

For decades, NASA and its counterparts in Europe and Asia have been fixed on the goal of exploring the Red Planet. Mars is closest to Earth of the seven other planets, and it’s a rocky planet like Earth. Its features have long fascinated stargazers. Mars seems like a natural target. But establishing a colony on Mars may be impractical. With current technology, it certainly is.

Titan, the goal John Ward sets in Detour, may be equally implausible as the site of a human colony. According to Wikipedia, “Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere—denser than Earth’s—and is the only known object in the Solar System besides Earth with clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid. . . Titan is primarily composed of ice and rocky material, with a rocky core surrounded by various layers of ice, including a crust of ice Ih and a subsurface layer of ammonia-rich liquid water.” So far, So good. Or so it appears.

The problem with Titan

It’s true that Titan’s dense atmosphere blocks cosmic radiation, removing a threat to visitors. However, the atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and methane. While it is considered relatively non-toxic, its primary threat is that it functions as an asphyxiant, similar to the threat posed by carbon monoxide exposure. When inhaled, it displaces ambient air, thus depriving the body of oxygen needed to breathe.” Which, of course, would be not so great for those colonists Ward proposes to send to Titan. And that means anyone landing on the moon’s surface would need to wear a spacesuit or stay within an oxygen-rich enclosure.

Thus, it seems unlikely that anytime soon we’ll see humans visiting Titan. However, NASA has scheduled a robotic mission named Dragonfly for 2028. It’s planned to arrive in 2034.

NASA has also begun to turn its attention to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which in many ways is a more interesting target. The Europa Clipper launched Oct. 14, 2024, on a journey to explore Jupiter’s ocean world. There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life may exist on Europa right now. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) to reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will orbit Jupiter, and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa.” So, in a few years, we’ll know a lot more.

About the authors

Photo of Jeff Rake, coauthor of this novel about a mission to Saturn
Jeff Rake. Image: Paul Drinkwater – We Live Entertainment

Jeff Rake is an American television producer and writer who is best known for his work on Boston Legal and creating the NBC hit Manifest. Born in 1968 and California-based, Rake holds a BA from Columbia University and a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law. Rake is married and the father of four children. Detour is his first novel.

Photo of Rob Hart, coauthor of this novel about a mission to Saturn
Rob Hart. Image: HY1

Rob Hart is an American author, novelist, and former journalist who has authored 12 novels to date and coauthored Detour. His most notable work is the sci-fi novel, The Warehouse. Born in New York in 1982, Hart earned a degree in journalism from State University of New York at Purchase.

I’ve also reviewed The Warehouse by Rob Hart (Amazon on steroids in a grim near-future dystopia).

For a nonfiction account of a more practical venture into space, see The Mission: A True Story by David W. Brown (Mission to Europa to find extraterrestrial life).

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