Rainbow Mars [Mass Market Paperback]

Larry Niven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2000

Five-time Hugo Award-winner Larry Niven weaves together time travel and fantasy to create an utterly unique novel on the origin of the Martian "canals."

Hanville Svetz was born into a future earth that matches the sorriest predictions of Greenpeace. With most of Earth's original species extinct, Svetz travels back and forth in time retrieving them. Svetz learns that Mars was inhabited, and how the sapient Martian species were wiped out. He forsees that Earth could soon fall victim to the same fate.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

According to Larry Niven, time travel is logically impossible--sheer fantasy. So when time-agent Svetz heads back from polluted future Earth in search of extinct animals, he tends to sideslip into fantastic, fictional worlds. In short stories collected in The Flight of the Horse (1973), his quests for a horse, a Gila monster, and a whale unearthed a unicorn, a dragon, and Moby-Dick. Less comic but equally daft, Rainbow Mars combines both space and time travel to explore Mars in the deep past, before it was a dead world. Naturally it's populated by a menagerie of warring fictional Martians from Edgar Rice Burroughs (multi-armed sword-wielders), H.G. Wells (tentacles and heat rays), and less familiar authors. Svetz and companions are soon in big trouble. Complications include a gigantic alien tree extending into Mars's orbit--an organic version of the space elevator in Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise. One of these useful "beanstalks" on Earth seems a highly desirable facility, but there are hidden drawbacks, and most of the multiplying timelines lead to disaster. This is fun for experienced SF readers who can follow the in-jokes and the switchback ride through tangled alternative histories. The earlier, even funnier Svetz stories are included as a bonus. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Time, space and a reader's patience become vertiginously distorted in this dizzying compilation of six linked tales written over a 30-year time span by Niven (Destiny's Road, etc.), winner of five Hugo Awards. Five short stories written between 1969 and 1973 follow the title novella (copyrighted 1999) but relate events predating its Martian adventures of Niven's klutzy time-traveler hero, Hanville Svetz, as he scours previous centuries for animals extinct in his environmentally devastated 2300 A.D. Earth. When Svetz's Institute for Temporal Research is transferred to the Bureau for Sky Domains, the resulting power struggle launches Svetz into Mars's inhabited past, accompanied by two lissome, stretch-suited astronauts, Zeera and Miya, on a mission to save Earth from Mars's dried-up fate and to colonize the solar system. After surviving Miya's lusty libido and multitudinous hokey alien monsters, Svetz solves one of the chief mysteries of Niven's universe, that of the Beanstalk stretching from earth to the heavens. Occasional satiric sparks light up Svetz's perils, but internal consistency is weak, while a generally gluey pace retards Niven's intended flights of imagination.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; 1st edition (May 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812566785
• ISBN-13: 978-0812566789
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #415,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

LARRY NIVEN is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. He lives in Chatsworth, California. JERRY POURNELLE is an essayist, journalist, and science fiction author. He has advanced degrees in psychology, statistics, engineering, and political science. Together Niven and Pournelle are the authors of many New York Times bestsellers including Inferno, The Mote in God's Eye, Footfall, and Lucifer's Hammer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What's to gush about?, June 10, 2001

By 

Addison Phillips (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rainbow Mars (Mass Market Paperback)

This isn't a bad book. The original Svetz stories are buried in the back, which makes the new material disappointingly lean by comparison. Actually, I wish the space had been used to elongate the Mars story, because there are some beautiful things in here that just seem to get hurried along. Niven's "rationalization" of some of Burrough's and Bradbury's material is nifty.

Sadly, I can't give this book a whole-hearted recommendation, though. If it were ONLY one or two classic Martian tales in play here, it would have been better. Instead the story gets bogged down with too many things to take care of and the beautiful ideas seem lost in it. If you're a Niven fan, as many others writing reviews here are, then you'll probably like it... but not love it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Over the Rainbow Mars, March 2, 2000

By 

Bob Buchanan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rainbow Mars (Hardcover)

I have always looked forward to Larry Nivens' works. As a master of "hard" science fiction Mr. Niven has few equals. Too bad this book is fantasy. I enjoyed the compilation of short stories previously published as "Flight of the Horse", now I realize why. They were short indulgences. A sideline to his normal, excellent SF. While long time SF readers will recognize the Martians encountered by Svetz and company during their "travels" to Mars' past, the book never develops past these recognitions. Entertaining to a degree but not what I look for from Larry Niven.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Niven missed...., September 28, 2004

By 

Michael Madsen "The Relic" (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rainbow Mars (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm a hardcore Niven fan and have been ever since I first read "A Gift From Earth", but with that said - this book is mediocre at best. I suppose it is just a matter of taste, but I found this book to be tedious and confusing. I usually appreciate his sense of humor, (anyone who hasn't read Man Of Steel/Woman of Kleenex is really missing out) but this time I have to say I just don't get it.