La Lista Negra (The Black List)

Catalog Description "La Lista Negra" by Alan Star is a science fiction novella set in the early twenty-first century. Dan Nichols, the youngest member of a wealthy American cotton-export family, returns to his family's ancestral mansion with his Japanese wife Ijima after eight years studying biology at Tokyo University. The rigid, tradition-bound Nichols family—represented by his older siblings Albert, Mathias, Robert, Adam, and sister Patricia—coldly rejects both Dan's wife and his pleas for financial support, citing his youthful disobedience and a document he signed renouncing his inheritance rights. After a heated confrontation where Dan strikes his eldest brother Albert, the couple departs. Facing destitution, Dan and Ijima consider employment opportunities on Mars, where experimental biologists are urgently needed, despite the planet's unhealthy climate. The narrative explores themes of familial obligation, modernization versus tradition, and desperation driving characters toward dangerous frontiers.