Spike TV has given a 10-episode order to "Red Mars," the sci-drama based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s bestselling Mars trilogy.

J. Michael Straczynski will write and executive produce the series, which is set to go into production next summer for a January 2017 premiere. Robinson is serving as a consultant.

"Red Mars" follows humanity's first attempts to colonize and terraform the planet, focusing on the lives of relative strangers, cut off from everything they've ever known, as they struggle to adapt to their inhospitable new home.

“The heart and soul of Red Mars is about humanity,” Sharon Levy, Spike's executive vice president of original series, said in a statement. “This group of strangers must find a way to live together and survive under the most daunting conditions mankind has ever faced to become the first living generation of Martians. They will be each other’s greatest source of strength and -- if they can’t coexist -- the greatest reason for failure.”

"Red Mars" is Spike's first scripted series in nine years.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)