Customer Reviews

The Martian Way and Other Stories

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This is a collection of three novellas and one short story: "The Martian Way" (1952) is a story about colonists on Mars who must find another source of water since a Joseph McCarthy-like polititian on Earth is threatening to cut off Earth's supply of water for Mars (the story came out right during the McCarthy problems in the U.S. Senate). "Youth" (1952) is about two pre-teenagers in a post nuclear-war world who come across some small "animals" that they wish to take to the circus not realizing that they are intelligent beings who had come to make contact with the youths' fathers. "The Deep" (1952) is focused on beings who live in the interior of a planet (their sun is dying and the inhabitants keep migrating deeper into their planet for the planet's natural heat) whose social structure considers maternal love to be a taboo and degenerate. They are forced to come into contact with beings (Earthlings) who they regard as obscene due to the presence of this emotion. "Sucker Bait" (1954) is centered on a world having two suns (the two suns and the planet form a Trojan orbital system of an equilateral triangle). A previous colony of a thousand members had died a hundred years earlier and a new expedition has been sent to discover why. Asimov also suggests in this story that scientists in the future may become so specialized that they will be unaware of basic facts anywhere outside of their specific field. I really doubt that. Anyone who has a love of science has a joy of all science. That will be true in the future as well (However, there will always be people [in any field] who are narrow minded.).

This is a terrific book. Asimov gives us a realistic dilema with technology, that at least from my "arm-chair" physicist point-of veiw makes sence. Going from point A to point B in months makes sence as it's unlikly we'll be warping around when all we've got is a martian colony. Using water for fuel seems plausible (since they use hydrogen and O2 already)and other problems (such as the expedition running out of drinking water) also make sense, seem plausible and are dealt with realistically. One exciting scene is ripped off by the movie Armageddon when the miners deal with what happens when two asteroids collide, and there's one more good scene where.... well, I'll let you read it.

I love Asimov, but this has got to be his best collection of shorts and the title story is the best of the lot. What a great read. It has everything that we love about Asimov, science fiction, and storytelling.

Since time immemorial, Mars has always figured largely in Earth's mythology. And ever since the prolific imaginations of the likes of HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs first put pen to paper beginning the development of modern sci-fi as a genre, Mars, Martians, travel to Mars and life on a hostile Mars have continued to be favourite topics. With "The Martian Way and Other Stories", Isaac Asimov proudly continues this hallowed tradition with a series of four stories written in the good doctor's unmistakable and well-loved style.

Despite its brevity, "The Martian Way" explores a myriad of topics including colonization of an extra-terrestrial planet, acclimation of human beings to space and space travel, the politics and economics of life on another planet and its relationship to "mother earth" and even the development of earth-side prejudices to a people that are now considered foreigners.

"Youth" tells the story of Slim and Red, two young boys, who have found two very strange animals. As any pair of young fellows might do, they hide the animals and feed and care for them to the best of their ability. They even dream about becoming wealthy by developing a circus act. The ending of the story discloses the surprise that the two animals are in fact the only survivors from a crashed alien spaceship (but ... and you'll have to trust me here on this one ... that is not a spoiler!) The REAL ending is a complete blind-side twist that only the likes of a twinkle-eyed fun-loving Asimov could imagine. I'll admit that the ending does seem somewhat artificial and forced but Asimov fans have long known that he loved his humour and always enjoyed tweaking his readers' noses. The joke is on us and even Asimov's silliness forces a reader to look into himself and investigate his self-centered notions of superiority.

Unfortunately, many sci-fi authors have fallen in to the trap of creating aliens that are simply humans (or humanoid, to use one of Star Trek's favourite aphorisms) with only a bizarre variation on their outward appearance. In "The Deep", however, Asimov has departed from that mundane mind-set and created a technologically advanced species with telepathic abilities that lives underground on a planet with dwindling resources. Teleporting an advance scout to earth to explore the possibilities of establishing contact with us and sharing our space on earth, the species discovers that the cultural, linguistic, physical and sociological gap between humans and their species is so vast that it could never be crossed.

"Sucker Bait", the longest of Isaac Asimov's novellas, deals, in a nutshell, with the potential rigors and difficulties of space travel, exploration and planetary colonization. An expedition to Troas, an earth-like planet located in orbit around a binary star system in the Messier 13 globular cluster, met with a mysterious disaster and failed to return or report back in any way. We are told the story of the follow-up expedition that was mounted to determine the fate of the original exploration. Although his tongue may have been at least partially inerted into his cheek, Asimov also uses "Sucker Bait" to cleverly discuss the potential pitfalls of ever continuing specialization in scientific research and the alarming and ever growing dearth of generalists and polymaths.

The back cover of the edition I read asks, "Still thinking like an earthling? Get out of your rut, open mind - there's a whole universe waiting." I've got to agree. If you enjoy science fiction, then you'll enjoy this classic collection of four short stories from perhaps the finest author the genre has ever seen. Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Maybe I'm just not a fan? I got bored while reading Foundation - never finished it. But I didn't want to give up on (one of) the greatest sci-fi writers of all time. This collection of short stories was my next attempt to get to know Asimov.

The Martian Way - This story seems to be hailed as the best of the lot. I found it to be the worst of the four stories presented. Although I think Asimov did a good job at imagining how people would be different if they were born on Mars and grew up in low-gravity, I didn't really care about any of the characters as people. I was really confused about the technical aspects of the story. I didn't understand what they were doing with the ships out on Saturn until the very end. I just don't think his description was clear enough. When he explained that it took them 1 year to get to Saturn, but then only 5 weeks to get back, as the reader I felt myself asking, "Wait. What?" I felt like the author's answer was, "Yeah, it works. Because I said so." Sorry, that doesn't work for me.

Youth - I loved this story. I loved the dialog and relationship between the two boys. I loved the description of post atomic-war society. I loved the aliens - their ethics and behavior. This is the story I will remember from this collection.

The Deep - Again, I had a hard time understanding the technical descriptions. I didn't really understand what the aliens were trying to do - what was that box and how would it solve their problem? But that didn't overshadow the main issue of how impossible it would be for two such different societies to ever see eye to eye, or mind to mind. While I didn't enjoy this story as much as Youth, it was better than The Martian Way.

Sucker Bait - I was really into this story. I loved the way Asimov described the characters. I loved the way the mystery was slowly revealed. I loved the idea of the young man's abilities and place in society. I was only let down with the final resolution to the mystery. It didn't have enough bang for all the build up. But this story still ranked at #2 in the collection for me.

Still some of the best science fiction stories I have ever read. Asimov definitely takes the cake.

It's the first time I'm buying books online.
I was really shocked that this is how an old book look like.
It looked brand new.

I'll probably start buying online more