Customer Reviews

The Fifth Man (Oxygen Series, Book 2)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the sequel to Oxygen, winner of the 2002 Christy Award, the mission to Mars continues as astronauts Valkerie Jansen, Bob Kaganovski, Alexis Ohata, and Kennedy Hampton search the arid, lifeless desert terrain of Mars for any signs of life, even the most microscopic. They've survived great obstacles to reach this point - an early flight explosion on their trip to Mars, the discovery of a potentially life-threatening bio-organism shortly after the accident, and personal difficulties in their relationships - but it all seemingly pays off as Valkerie discovers a microscopic organism buried in a deep tunnel protected from the sun's harsh cosmic rays. Despite her uncertainty about how to deal with Bob's awkward marriage proposal - especially considering their claustrophobic conditions - she's elated at the prospect of doing what so many have dreamed and theorized about: discovering life on Mars.

However, trouble is brewing under the surface. While Commander Kennedy Hampton shows increasingly aggressive, confrontational behavior towards the rest of the crew, Bob Kaganovski feels watched out of the corner of his eyes. He's gone through all the psychological studies and training, and is well aware of the potential stresses of being alone with only three other people on a desolate planet - but still, he feels certain that something is out there, watching their every move. Coupled with the pang of unrequited love, the foundations for an explosive decompression are laid. When Valkerie and Kennedy fall ill with an unexplained sickness and start hallucinating sounds and an other presence, a match is held very close to burning flame.

Meanwhile, things are unraveling at NASA in Houston. As top flight officials face mounting pressure over whether or not they should bring back their sick astronauts and risk "back-contamination" - contaminating Earth with a potentially extraterrestrial bacteria - it becomes clear someone at Mission Control can't be trusted. Whether it's a Russian spy or one of their own gone bad, a hacker is on the loose, determined to do everything in their power to ruin the mission and strand their astronauts on Mars forever.

Commander Kennedy goes insane and attacks Valkerie and Bob; someone steals the Rover and sabotages vital equipment and supplies, and strange things go "bump in the night". Have they all gone mad with a Martian disease...or is there a "fifth man" among them?

This is a novel I REALLY wanted to love; in fact, I did for most of the story. Olsen and Ingermanson lay down a narrative that's tense and suspenseful, the science is plausible and believable, and there are a lot of Red Planet (Val Kilmer) and Mission to Mars (Gary Sinese) vibes that really makes the reader wonder: is a Christian science fiction novel going to go where no Christian science fiction novel has gone before, (pun intended), and declare life on other planets?

**SPOILER ALERT** Alas, the spookie heebie jeebies are explained away, making this once again a "safe" Christian science fiction novel that colors within the lines. The skill to tell an engaging story is here, and while many won't blink twice at the novel's ending, I'm sure more than a few will feel a little disappointment upon discovering the "fifth man" isn't who/what we were hoping.

This is an enjoyable, suspenseful novel for the most part, but if you were hoping for boundary-pushing science fiction that'll pose interesting questions concerning theology and life on other planets like Rendezvous With Rama, and Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke, this isn't it, despite skillful writing and attention to detail.

The crew has reached its destination Mars after a harrowing near death space trip from earth (see OXYGEN). Now a new survival test begins with the crew trying to live on a planet that makes Antarctica seem like a sauna and no rescue flight possible. Nothing should be able to survive in this frozen inhabitant.

The four member crew struggles with the harshness of life while trying to meet NASA's detailed expectations in which every nanosecond is booked. Meanwhile, deeply religious microbial ecologist Dr. Valkerie Jansen finds proof that life once existed on the angry red planet, but swears she has also seen a "fifth man" sabotaging their mission. No one else has seen this ET so Commander Dr. Bob Kaganovski worries that she is cracking up under the strain. Illness has hit the team too in what seems like a War of the Worlds reversal. Martian madness grips the crew, but is that why Bob cannot stop looking at Valkerie while they wonder if infected, can they go home?

The second book in John B. Olson, and Randall Ingermanson marvelous Martian mission, THE FIFTH MAN, is a great Christian science fiction thriller that enables the audience to feel they are living on the frozen tundra along with the crew. The exhilarating story line hooks the reader on several levels including the obvious survival adventure and whether THE FIFTH MAN exists or is imagined and if the latter who is sabotaging their chances of enduring the severity. Fans will wonder if bacteria could live on this ice cold orb while applauding the two authors for once again proving that science and religion are compatible.

Harriet Klausner

Picking up where "Oxygen" left off, this book continues a fascinating tale of near-future Science Fiction. The skill and brilliance of the writing of this pair of books more than compensates for a couple of technical, logistic oversights that become more glaring in this volume.

This is a rich and rewarding read with high drama, incredible risks, competing political and career goals for both individuals and for Multi-Billion Dollar industries. It combines competing ideologies, elements of romance, and a raw survival instinct in a harsh and completely unforgiving environment. It kept me reading in spite of some weaknesses.

The sequel to Oxygen is one of the most gripping, exciting, and best written sequels I've ever read. If you're looking for an excellent read - buy Oxygen and Fifth Man at the same time. You won't want to wait to start the first page of Fifth Man after you finish the last page of Oxygen!

Become the Sixth Man/Woman! Get them both now!

What I liked best about The Fifth Man is that it isn't "from Mars." In fact, I slowly began to recognize Mars, not from anything learned at the NASA Web site (although that is a good place to begin), but from my own life as a child in a cold (sometimes horribly cold) climate, where everything is reduced to surviving the cold. Only life forms equipped to survive a level of cold that is essentially anti-life will make it.

Predictably, the four astronauts of the previous book, Oxygen, begin to experience the strain of such a life, now that they have ended up on Mars. They begin to imagine -- or are they imagining? -- that there is a "fifth man" around who is doing terrible things. Could the fifth man be an extraterrestrial? Extraterrestrials might not want Earthlings bashing around Mars. Or are the astronauts slowly going mental under the strain?

Think of this: If someone is on Mars, and you suspect that they have gone bush crazy, you cannot just pick them up and fly them out, the way you can fly them out of the Arctic or Antarctic. Can one person's craziness infect all the others? Or is that the answer to all the strange events? Something to think about as you read ...

I won't spoil the fun by revealing the ending, but I will say that this story should appeal to sci-fi and mystery buffs alike -- as well as to fans of novels of the North.

What I liked best about The Fifth Man is that it isn't "from Mars." In fact, I slowly began to recognize Mars, not from anything learned at the NASA Web site (although that is a good place to begin), but from my own life as a child in a cold (sometimes horribly cold) climate, where everything is reduced to surviving the cold. Only life forms equipped to survive a level of cold that is essentially anti-life will make it.

Predictably, the four astronauts of the previous book, Oxygen, begin to experience the strain of such a life, now that they have ended up on Mars. They begin to imagine -- or are they imagining? -- that there is a "fifth man" around who is doing terrible things. Could the fifth man be an extraterrestrial? Extraterrestrials might not want Earthlings bashing around Mars. Or are the astronauts slowly going mental under the strain?

Think of this: If someone is on Mars, and you suspect that they have gone bush crazy, you cannot just pick them up and fly them out, the way you can fly them out of the Arctic or Antarctic. Can one person's craziness infect all the others? Or is that the answer to all the strange events? Something to think about as you read ...

I won't spoil the fun by revealing the ending, but I will say that this story should appeal to sci-fi and mystery buffs alike -- as well as to fans of novels of the North.

I was dissapointed with this book. I enjoyed the story and character development, but the characters don't develop near as much as in Oxygen. It's not telling tales out of school to say that you find out in the first few pages that the answer to the proposal at the end of Oxygen was not promising. Which kind of brings the former book down, as part of it's great ending was the wonderful feeling of romantic hope!

The premise was great- but then it becomes something far less, and nothing fully gets resolved. And the intense issues that could have been brought out from the Mars mission end up being watered down.

The theological and emotional issues that were struggled with in the previous book also are much tamer here, and I didn't feel like there was as much meat to chew on personally from this book, as compared to Oxygen. Much of this is because the issues that seemed to be resolved in the first one, are all back again, with a vengeance.

Still, I'd recommend it. It's fun to read, it's SciFi, it's Christian- and there still is some issues brought out surrounding what it means to be a Christian in the workplace...20 million miles away.

I received the Olson / Ingermanson duo's first book, Oxygen, in Christmas of 2001. Regardless of the new Lord of the Rings trilogy I was also given (in a collector's edition platinum-issue cardboard box, plus The Hobbit!), I was inexorably drawn to Oxygen. I finished it quickly, loved the characters, and loved the story.

So of course I was blessed to learn that chem/phys whizzes and word wranglers John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson were already at work cranking out the sequel, The Fifth Man, subtitle: Will they find life on the Red Planet . . . before it finds them?.

The Fifth Man could work as a standalone novel; there's no Batman-TV-show-like "We have already seen . . ." prologue near the beginning. Right away, we're on Mars, with the crew of the Ares 10, year 2014, but with today's technology in full action in an actual Mars mission.

At first things might seem a little disappointing for Oxygen readers. We know that at the end of the first novel, all the psychological warfare and personal conflicts between the members of the Ares 10 crew was resolved. After all the chaos getting to the Red Planet, everyone had finally learned to cooperate, to trust each other . . . they had a bond.

Not so in The Fifth Man. Things are getting a little tight again, and crew members Valkerie Jansen, Bob Kaganovski, Kennedy Hampton and Alexis Ohta are back to fighting. Perhaps they have a good reason. An apparent spacecraft saboteur, a bomb, seeming infections by meteorite bacteria and of course the oxygen shortages were bad enough on the way to Mars. Now it seems that something else inhabits the planet . . . a being, a presence. It's scratching the sides of their buildings, stalking them, it's just out there . . . somewhere.

That alone causes enough misgivings for the crew. Then there's Valkerie's declining of Bob's on-Mars, live-on-international-TV marriage proposal. So both of them are at odds. But most disappointing is Kennedy-he's back to being an absolute jerk. Like the crew, I had just begun to like him at the end of Oxygen.

But don't think I was disappointed in the novel altogether. Not so. The Fifth Man is undoubtedly even better than its prequel. The Olson / Ingermanson duo have done even more homework for this mission, weaving science facts in with a little knowledge of Martian geography; everything is incredibly realistic. But this is also science fiction with characters you want to like-and I just found Kennedy's behavior depressing.

Like one other The Fifth Man reviewer, any readers who expect to see huge tentacles come snaking out of anyplace aren't necessarily going to find them. This is Christian fiction, after all, and many Christ-believers don't hold to the idea of life outside of Earth.

(The theology for this is simple: the Earth is the center of God's focus. Postulations about other planetary civilizations and even Narnia-like parallel worlds are interesting, but the Bible says nothing about these. One could say that if there were Martians, for example, Christ would have to incarnate as a perfect Martian to die for their sins . . . this seems absurd, to say the least.

But who's to say there isn't any "life" on Mars - not necessarily creatures with reasoning capability, but in the form of tiny organisms such as those Valkerie finds early in the novel? Evolution-believers would explain it as even more proof that life evolved there also. But as Bob explains to Valkerie, so what? All we would know is that the organisms are there; it doesn't prove any more evolution except to those who interpret it that way.)

I found it difficult to locate The Fifth Man's exact climax, because it seems to encompass the entire latter half of the story! In addition to the unknown being, the crew has to deal with an apparent raving space loon . . . and of course the conspiracies on Earth threaten the mission even further . . . and will the crew even be affected by back-contamination from unknown Martian microbes?

Everything is weaved together perfectly. Every circumstance has an explanation. The unanswered plot questions left over from the original Oxygen are also resolved perfectly. Regardless, we still don't have the Ares 10 crew safely on terra firma once again. Oxygen and The Fifth Man are spectacular enough, setting new standards in Christian fiction . . . but would The Oxygen Trilogy not sound even more impressive?

I'm holding my breath.

I was thrilled to see a sequel to "Oxygen." I'm not a big sci-fi fan (of course, my weight has nothing to do with this), but the first book in this series was full of real characters facing real dilemmas with real emotions. I loved it. I also enjoyed Ingermanson's "Transgression."

"The First Man" has the most gripping premise yet. I dove in with bated breath, awaiting the inevitable encounters with the fabled Martian life-form that the catalogues and cover and write-ups hinted at. I plunked down hard cash for a peek at something new, even frightening. Recently, I had fun reading Shane Johnson's "Ice" (which also has a sequel on the way), and I had full confidence that this book would deliver the same level of creativity.

From the start, the authors hook us with their familiar characters: Bob, Valkerie, Lex, and Kennedy. The story begins, naturally, where the last left off--with the intrepid team of four on Mars. Quickly, we begin to suspect that a fifth being, "the fifth man," is lurking about on the mysterious red planet. Suspicions and questions arise, romance fights for a foothold, tensions mount, and we move to the edges of our seats for the extraterrestrial showdown. Two hundred pages into it...still waiting. Three hundred...still waiting. Faith wavering.

Ingermanson and Olson write with active verbage and tight storytelling. The scientific issues are handled deftly, without pretense. Though the authors occasionally sprinkle the mix with tired cliches and silly similes ("his heart quivering like a bowlful of Santa's belly"?!), the writing is above par for the Christian market. These small errors I can overlook.

What I cannot overlook is the misleading title, cover, and premise. Yes, the book offers satisfactory, supposedly even startling, explanations for all the goings-on, but it fails to live up to the promised thrills. Yes, for the scientifically minded, the conclusion may be the most believable, but I bought this novel hoping for some good old-fashioned fun. "Alien" this is not.

Who bears the blame for the marketing misdirection, the authors or the publisher? Either way, I feel let down. Was it worth the time and money? Yes, the story was intriguing, the characters still likeable as before. Was it close to meeting my expectations? No, not quite.

I still trust this writing team's abilities, but next time I'll remember not to trust the marketing. Go into this with no expectations and enjoy it for what it is. And isn't.

Just to let you know how much I enjoyed The Fifth Man, consider this...I am an avid reader, having read 48 books so far this year. Of these Oxygen and its sequel The Fifth Man have to be my favorites. There have been plenty others I have truly loved but there is a lot to recommend with these two books. Combine adventure, mystery, meticulous research that made the whole Mars mission believable, great character development and a bit of romance, no wonder Oxygen won the 2002 Christy Award. I believe The Fifth Man is better yet.
I particularily liked the very human characters, their thoughts revealing fears and insecurities that we all have while they displayed acts of courage. The suspense was intense and the action lively and unpredictable. It contained all the elements of a good story leaving the reader with a craving for more and thinking of the ending long after the final page.
Bravo to the two fine writers who are willing to create "real men" characters that are also sensitive and not afraid to reveal their emotions and females who are smart and independant. I look foward to future offerings by Randy Ingermanson and John Olson!