Phobos [Hardcover]

Ty Drago (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 2003

Lt. Mike Brogue is one of a kind: the only native Martian to be a commissioned officer. He's the military's poster boy for relieving political tensions between Mars Colony and Earth---but he wants nothing to do with it. Brogue is just a man trying to do his job as a tactical analyst and prefers to leave the politics to civilians and government subcommittees.
After he manages to save a top Terran official from an extremist plot, however, the only way to avoid the spotlight is to get offplanet. So he pulls some strings and gets shipped to one of the small moons of Mars to help unravel a mystery.
Some people at the research station on Phobos---Mars's smallest moon---have been killed, and it seems like the culprit is a native life form. The first military team sent in quickly discovered just how lethal the Phobos beast could be.
Brogue, however, doesn't focus on the dust clouds and barren rock that compose the beast's lair but rather turns his attention to the high-tech research facility and its crew.
He soon learns that there's no such thing as a safe haven from political upheaval.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set on 22nd-century Mars and the larger of its two moons, Phobos, Drago's first novel successfully combines hard science (biotech and nanotech) with military and social SF. The SED corporation, which mines a vital metal christened barsoomium, calls the shots on the colonized Red Planet. When Lieutenant Michael Brogue, the only native Martian colonist in the Peacekeepers, rescues a visiting Terran politician from terrorists, he discovers that no good deed goes unpunished. He gets transferred to Phobos, where he replaces the moon's popular Peacekeeper officer recently killed by a mysterious life form known as the Phobos Beast. He also encounters the formidable Sergeant Choi Min Lau and the equally formidable Wilber Isaacs and his daughter Gabrielle, entrepreneurs running the Agraria research station on Phobos. Tracking down the Phobos Beast tangles Brogue in a web of intrigue involving near-mutiny, kidnapping and murder. After a weak opening (with infelicitous coinages like "Freedomist"), the author hardly sets a foot or a word wrong. This is a strong candidate for the year's best SF debut.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Drago's exceptionally well-written first novel is a police procedural set on Mars in the twenty-second century. Lieutenant Mike Brogue, a tactical analyst, is the only native Martian officer in the Peace (-keeping) Corps, and for that reason, he isn't trusted by many of his colleagues. Their grudging acceptance is better than being a political public relations token, however, as is his lot after he saves the life of a high government official--a Terran official--and foils a terrorist plot. Escaping that predicament, he is sent to Phobos, where something suspected of being a native Martian life-form is killing people at a highly guarded research station. The book's opening sequences are a bit awkward, especially the dialogue, but once the investigation gets going, plot, pacing, and characters blend well. And suspense rapidly builds as we realize that some of the plots afoot threaten death tolls that make the ambitions of the terrorists Brogue foils early on seem mild. More, if you please, Mr. Drago. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1 edition (November 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765305445
• ISBN-13: 978-0765305442
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,137,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping even with Star Trekkian mis-physics, July 20, 2004

By 

Helen Kay "helenkay" (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phobos (Hardcover)

A space-opera whodunit suspense, complete with "no one is leaving this room until the guilty person here is exposed" scene. Good characters and story line. However, I stopped mentally listing the physics faux pas halfway through. And not nitpicky ones - blatant.

It's not the second law of thermodynamics that is responsible for recoil (it's Newton 2nd law); the zero-G antics are fun but often wrong (a chair with 20 kg mass is still MASS even on Phobos and if it hits you going 300kph or whatever it'll kill you); the shuttle impact on the surface as described must have taken place at 20mph or less or the hero would not have survived being slammed agains the suddenly-stopped cockpit wall; rockets don't fly in arcs (and don't do U-turns!) except near gravity wells, and then you have to match speeds to the orbital arc you want; leaping from a spinning surface in zero-G means the spin you had is imparted to your flight via conservation of rotational inertia. You couldn't jump straight down the axis of a longitudinally spinning ship without eventually hitting a wall due to radial velocity imparted from the floor UNLESS you jumped right on axis...

(Conservation of linear and rotational momentum are violated often... )

If you're falling in low G, touching a wall would impart outward force and send you away from the wall... jumping up to the ceiling in lowG doesn't mean you hit with a thump and stay there... unless you grab a handhold you'll bounce off with almost as much velocity as you hit...

You might say, who cares? We ignore Star Trek creating new "bands" of radiation at every turn... but all these things add up since so much of the storyline depends on these antics...if you're a hard sciences purist anyway.

But read it! It's gripping and fun, even with information withheld by the protagonist. The ending was suspenseful and not totally predictable. Had me going there.

I've always been picky that way... as an engineering physics major. I love Star Trek, Star Wars, everything, but you don't want to watch it with me because I nitpick every physics mistake!

A good read; I'll read the sequel. Overall, a high recommendation. As Mike Resnick said, "a very impressive first novel."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange world, strange case, January 12, 2004

By 

Samer T Ismail "SF & classical music fan" (Danbury, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Phobos (Hardcover)

The biggest mystery in Phobos may not be the case Peace Corps lieutenant Mike Brogue is sent to solve, but the universe in which Phobos is set. Some of the backstory is filled in, but many questions remain unanswered (at least for now--the ending suggests a sequel).

The mystery itself is an engaging one, reminiscent of another debut novel, Matthew Delaney's Jinn. While that novel used writing gimmicks to create shocks (such as withholding necessary information), this one doesn't. If anything, the book reminded me of an episode of "Scooby-Doo" (and this is a compliment): before long it is clear that there *is* a rational explanation for everything that's happened; it's up to Brogue et al. to find it.

The book moves along at a fair clip, with enough suspense and intrigue to carry you through to the last pages. If Drago writes a sequel, I'll definitely read it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't miss this one, April 23, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Phobos (Hardcover)

I can't believe this book is not selling better. Somehow word of mouth is just not getting out. This is a great story. It's fun, exciting, and everything you want in an SF novel. The mystery part keeps it moving, the characters are fully developed and interesting. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. It's a great read and I can't wait for whatever Ty Drago comes up with next.