Customer Reviews

Mars

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Ben Bova weaves a compelling, realistic tale of man's first mission to Mars. This is a plot-line that has been pretty well beaten to death, but Bova has created a story that, I think, explores the complexities and possibilites of our first exploration of the Red Planet. The strength of this books is definitely in character development. The main character, Jamie Waterman, is a geologist whose father is a well-educated Navaho indian, and his mother from a wealthy family in New England. This type of character could easily have been cliched, but I found him to be thoughtful, sympathetic, and well-developed. His family are both professors at Berkeley, but I found it interesting that Bova had Waterman study at a less well known school (University of New Mexico). Waterman isn't some superhuman who was destined for greatness from the time he was three, just a smart, hard working scientist who through a combination of effort and luck ultimately gets selected to go to Mars. The ultimate goals of this mission are two fold: to find out as much as they can (in a scientific sense), but also to lay the ground work for future missions.

The story starts with the explorers arrival on Mars, but the text is filled with flashbacks that describe the training, the characters, some of their initial interactions, and the background of the trip to Mars. Bova clearly did his homework when writing this book and describes Mars in great detail. Many of the difficulties encountered by the explorers are well-reasoned and well-explained, and the entire mission plan is well thoughtout by Bova. One thing that could really have added to this book was a map of Mars so that we could see where everyone was going and what the relationship was between the locations visited by the scientists.

There are a few things that I didn't like about this story. Occasionally the tale degenerates into `Beverly Hills 90210' in space. The characters become more interested in who is sleeping with who, or who is giving who little meaningful winks. There is also a minor story thread that involves the US vice-president and simple power politics. This didn't really advance the story at all and was left hanging at the end. This thread was wasted space in my view, Bova should have used it on Mars. This book was written in 1992 and the Russians play a much larger role in the mission than they likely would given the current political climate. This dates the book slightly, but there is no real US/Russian Cold War rivalry. Finally, some of the rivalries between the scientists are a bit overblown.

Finally, I thought the ending was fantastic, an intelligent ending to an intelligent book. One of the less favorable reviews states that there is no big payoff at the end. Without giving too much away, there isn't any great termination of the story, so if you're looking for some fantastic discovery to finish the tale, you'll be disappointed. The `payoff' is the journey itself, not the conclusion. Bottom line - this story is an intelligent tale of man's first visit to Mars with well-developed, complex characters. Definitely recommended.

Ben Bova's novel 'Mars' is slow, a little too slow at times, but nevertheless is a fun journey to the red planet. The story deals with an international expedition to Mars whose primary mission is to search for signs of life. Along the way rivalries and romance spring up among the crew. While the science-fiction is hard and entertaining, the story more often delves into the realm of soap opera. Bova is an author that no doubt has done extensive research on the subject of space travel but this proves to be both a plus and a minus. Sometimes it feels as though he's forcing situations into the book to show off his research, more often than not to the detrement of the plot. Of course, the plot itself is rather thin. But I do have to say that Bova throws in more than a few twists and turns that will hold your interest and gives us a clever ending. If you're looking for something that's fairly easy to read and you enjoy B-movie characters, this one could be for you.

I believe that this book was not about Mars. This book was a way to protest about the way mankind reacts when science advances faster than our understnding. Ulterior motives, politics, personal hatred, racial stereotypes, pride and more evils are found in the crew of scientist on their way to Mars.

This book was very informative. I believe that the major task of literature is to inform. Ben Bova has a fun way to do it. "Mars" is a book that keeps you reading. It's like a mirror of our soroundings.
Bova wants to make a comparison between the two worlds by placing a village that resembles terrestrial dwelings. It could be also a warning that whatever happened in Mars could happen here if we are not careful. I think this is the main message in this book. "Humans will be humans" and it's so human to go to Mars and pollute it with our prejudice, ignorance and arrogance(not to mention dangerous CFC's hydrocarbons and other pollutants).Or maybe that's the reason Mars today is dead. Maybe the Martians made the same mistakes we're making today and the result is a barren planet.

If you read this book thinking that you are going to read about Mars, then don't read it, unless you want to learn about regolites, permafrosts, and other geological formations. There is nothing else in Mars to talk about.
If you want to read about men and women undertaking a major scientific endeavor and read about their adventures, then you won't be dissapointed!

The one good thing about this book is that if you completely ignore the politics (impossible in this book!) the story of how man might put together an expedition to Mars is actually fairly plausible.

Unfortunately, the book is overrun by politics. Evidently this novel was written just before the old Soviet Union fell apart, because it postulates that the Soviets dominate the international consortium due to their superior science, dynamic economy, and experience in space. The novel even has a throwback to the early Space Race days when a Russian explains that Russia pulled itself up to modernity in one generation and gave billions in foreign aid to the Third World. God only knows where Bova has been during the 90s. Oh, I almost forgot. A gaggle of South Americans are the "soul of the Mars project." Sure--South America is constantly forging ahead into outer space. Bova's depiction of 21st Century America is utterly depressing. If that is the way things are going, I might emigrate to Mars myself.

Putting this aside, the book is tolerable. The technical concepts behind the Mars expedition as postulated by Bova are well thought-out and plausible, and the characters, excepting the Russians, aren't badly done. In fact they are quite well done by Bova's standards. Several of them are near sociopaths though, and one wonders if psychologists are really sufficiently incompetent to select people like this for the trip. NASA mostly seems to avoid these problems, but then again most US astronauts seem to be Midwestern farming types. Maybe a disparate group of Russians, Americans, Chinese, Indians, South Americans, and Europeans would be as dysfunctional as Bova predicts.

The book is worth a read, but isn't one that most people will want to keep on their bookshelves for a repeat. Someone still needs to write a **really good** novel about man going to Mars. Or maybe we just need to do it for real.

This may have been an interesting story, but I could not stomach the offensive racial and cultural stereotypes. I finally put the book down-- threw it in the trash, actually-- after the main character, a half-Navajo, upon receiving good news, was depicted as follows: "Jamie's first impulse was to give an ear-splitting war whoop." I doubt a Navajo would be any more tempted to react to good news in this fashion than I, of Irish descent, would be tempted to shout "begorrah" and dance a jig.

Mr. Bova deals the Navajo people a great insult by portraying them without bothering to do more than a cursory research of their culture. Mr. Bova: Navajo children on the reservation do not speak broken English.

I think the most terrible disappointment is one like this one is... the sort that promises so much, but ends up little more than formula with a dose of machoism to boot. Mr. Bova has a common thread in all his books, there isn't a male character that won't take pause to admire how f**kable the female characters are, no matter how dire the situation... If a plot-line could be charted on a graph, I'd imagine that all of his books would align almost exactly to some formula or other.

MARS and its companion (Return to Mars) however, are anticlimax embodied. You drag yourself through the whole trudging plot to find it to be not worth much of the effort. I suppose he likes to write about how things are done and how they work, and those are indeed interesting for their own part, but not enough to hold up an entire book, let alone a SEQUEL! Argh!

My recommendation? For what it's worth: It may appeal to some.. why there's plenty of 'little Joanna' and frisky Russian astro-skanks to go around, and lots of technobabble to keep you busy ::incoherent grumbling:: But for my count, I found myself, like after reading most of his other books (in some mad hope to find some appeal in his writing), putting the book down and rolling my eyes, wondering how I could have possibly wasted as much time on that when I could have been reading something better, like The Sparrow, or Ender's Game. Anyway, such is my opinion.

It appears that Ben Bova didn't look any farther than Primetime television to research his characters, as they all exhibit the glossy stereotypes one would normally find on TV at 8:00. From the die-hard blond reporter whose first rule of survival is "Don't go to bed with a man until you get what you want;" the Japanese science leader who decorates his cubicle with watercolors of birds and mountains for "comfort;" the british doctor who hides his sexual obsessions beneath a veneer of refinement.... and even the main character, a half navaho American geologist (they'd make the Indian a rock doctor, don't you know) who apparently lapses into his ancestral language during bouts of intense emotion, the racial stereotypes abound. As if this wasn't bad enough, the plotting is an uncannily watered down shadow of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" and it jumps between locations at breakneck speed, never allowing the reader to understand any specific chronology of events. I finished this book for the SOLE reason that I could not believe that it would continue to be so bad! Unfortunately, it did, and it does. I don't recommend this book at all, if you are looking for cardboard characters, predictable plotlines, and no depth, watch a sitcom. Skip the book

Man's first expedition to Mars, the political and financial intrigue behind the scenes, the crew's training here on Earth, the interaction of the crew in transit, the struggle to maintain sexual self-discipline for five months in space, the indescribable excitement of being one of the chosen few to walk upon the Red Planet.

This book is entirely believable, and in many passages reads like nonfiction. Ben Bova patiently--but not condescendingly--explains the science behind the characters' activities. He also does a fine job of portraying the characters' child-like enthusiasm for finding evidence of life on Mars--an obsession tempered by their skeptical scientific minds.

This story can be quite frightening: there are several mishaps--several injuries--that just might make you yelp. Through these mishaps, the reader comes to care for the characters.

HOWEVER, Mr. Bova always likes to interject romance into his novels, and I'm afraid his portrayal of romantic feelings on the printed page is rather two-dimensional. His romantic characters seem to always suffer from an inability to adequately express themselves, and are shackled by miscommunication. In short, his portrayal of romance is immature.

But don't let that stop you. This book is worth reading. Especially now (April '04), for as you read these words, two rovers from Earth are prowling about the frigid red sands of Mars.

I liked the book, in general, but about every fifty pages Bova's superficial science knocks me right out of the story. In the middle of the story, there's a meteor storm, which affects the characters like a machine-gun attack. AARGH! This ancient meteor-shower menace was already a cheap cliche (and unrealistic, to boot) back in the days of Flash Gordon. Then there's the ending, which makes me wonder if Bova paid any attention to what he described his characters as drinking. If you're not a science nit-picker like me, however, it's a good read. (And I really like the half-Navajo main character.)

I just completed a Mars-a-thon with this book and RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson. I put them side by side and realized I liked this book more, even though the other one won a major award. Why??

Basically, Robinson's book was about colonizing, exploiting, terraforming and destroying Mars. I kept wading through the political and personal details, hoping for some fictional portrayal of what we want to learn most of all about Mars. IS THERE LIFE??? Or even remains of former life? The colonists seem to forget all about this question.

Now for Bova's book. Yes, there are boring technical details about landers, space suits etc. Yes there are those tedious details about the scientists' egos and sex lives. But there is one thing that really impressed me about this book: interludes portraying the ancient history of Mars, from the viewpoint of the planet itself. What cataclysms created those immense canyons and labyrinthine badlands? Could Mars have once held life--only to have it snuffed out because Mars had the bad luck to live in a dangerous neighborhood? These sections helped me to see Mars as a real world, not just a backdrop for human hubris.

In the end I cared more about the protagonist of this book, a venturesome Navaho Indian, than I did about the "first hundred" colonists in Robinson's book. When the team was trapped in the canyon, I really cared. The ending was quite suspenseful, and SPOILER WARNING, yes, they DO find life. That was a satisfying ending for me. For me, the romance and fascination of the other planets is all about their potential for life--not as mining colonies or suburban outposts.