Rainbow Mars (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "390 Atomic Era. Svetz was nearly home, but the snake was waking up..." (more)
Key Phrases: extension cage, wok ship, dole yeast, Willy Gorky, Lord Pfee, Mons Olympus (more...)

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

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312867778
• ISBN-13: 978-0312867775
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,210,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ripped off, May 1, 2000

By	Bret Marquis (San Diego, California) - See all my reviews

I seldom buy hardbacks since very few are worth the price. The exception is anything from Larry Niven. I have always purchased his hardback first editions as soon as they are released. Especially when he makes the effort to write on his own and not with that idiot Pournelle. Rainbow Mars was a mistake. A marginal work at best and only half the book. He reprints some old ho hum work from his early days to fill space. If you have to read it, wait for a used paperback edition.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Should never have been published, November 20, 1999

By	C. Little (Newbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've enjoyed the time-travelling antics before, but I never realized how much of a god-send the short story format is until I bought and then tried to read this monumentally bad piece of writing. Niven fans will be VERY disappointed and this pedantic work was obviously done for cyncial commercial reasons. Even force of will will not carry you through this book.

5 of 5 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 (REAL NAME)

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.