Customer Reviews

Voyage to the Red Planet

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Look at NASA...please! If there isn't a more frightening indication of the impact of space on today's culture, I'll become a monk in space. Can you even see NASA from where you are, or is it hidden behind the lifestyles, the crime reports, the utter banality of "human interest" stories in the news? When you do hear about NASA it is either because they are requesting more money, having their budget cut by Congress, or they've delayed the shuttle launch yet again. Is today's apathy with space caused by NASA's incompentence, or vice versa? Either way, the future looks grim.

Grim tidings bring modest proposals. Bisson's proposal in Voyage to the Red Planet may be hidden by a standard SF adventure plot, but it is as cutting as Swift's ever was. When the government has to sell off various departments (like NASA) to corporations to pay back the national debt, when movie stars become a new royalty, that's where you'll find Bisson, pillorying the temples with a humor and irreverence that's a joy to read. In every chapter Bisson drops a casual remark that seems innocuous at first, but sits like a dormant virus until you immune system yells "Uncle" and then unleashes its full fury making you double- and triple-up in laughter.

The plot and writing reminded me of late 60s/early 70s Philip K. Dick, except jazzed up and in tune with the 90s. Like Dick's novels, even though Voyage to the Red Planet is set in the future, its topic is the present. Today, Bisson says, we are in danger from greedy corporations threatening to gobble up each other in a gigantic Ouroboros-orgy, we are in danger of creating a new aristocracy with its own rules and classes, we are in danger of losing our perspective on what is important and what isn't. What Bisson isn't saying, though, is that the future or the present is filled with doom. If we can doctor ourselves with a little humor and stop taking everything so damned seriously, perhaps there will be some hope for us all.

Boldly go where no pawn of the multinational corporations has gone before. Lots of fun and filled with fresh ideas. Sort of a hybrid between Star Trek and Neal Stephenson's 'Snowcrash'.

Disney-Gerber, Beatrice-Texaco, and other corporate conglomerates run the world; Movie Stars are members of a hereditary caste; and the first humans to set foot on Mars are there to make a movie.

A few days after I'd finished this book, I saw it on my shelf and couldn't remember what it was about. I prefer my science fiction to have some challenging or mind-bending ideas in it, but if you're just looking for a little light entertainment, this is an amusing book.

(My favorite book about Mars is Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars.")