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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
T H E F I F T H M A N, February 13, 2003
I received the Olson / Ingermanson duo's first book, Oxygen, in Christmas of 2001. Regardless of the new Lord of the Rings trilogy I was also given (in a collector's edition platinum-issue cardboard box, plus The Hobbit!), I was inexorably drawn to Oxygen. I finished it quickly, loved the characters, and loved the story.So of course I was blessed to learn that chem/phys whizzes and word wranglers John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson were already at work cranking out the sequel, The Fifth Man, subtitle: Will they find life on the Red Planet . . . before it finds them?. The Fifth Man could work as a standalone novel; there's no Batman-TV-show-like "We have already seen . . ." prologue near the beginning. Right away, we're on Mars, with the crew of the Ares 10, year 2014, but with today's technology in full action in an actual Mars mission. At first things might seem a little disappointing for Oxygen readers. We know that at the end of the first novel, all the psychological warfare and personal conflicts between the members of the Ares 10 crew was resolved. After all the chaos getting to the Red Planet, everyone had finally learned to cooperate, to trust each other . . . they had a bond. Not so in The Fifth Man. Things are getting a little tight again, and crew members Valkerie Jansen, Bob Kaganovski, Kennedy Hampton and Alexis Ohta are back to fighting. Perhaps they have a good reason. An apparent spacecraft saboteur, a bomb, seeming infections by meteorite bacteria and of course the oxygen shortages were bad enough on the way to Mars. Now it seems that something else inhabits the planet . . . a being, a presence. It's scratching the sides of their buildings, stalking them, it's just out there . . . somewhere. That alone causes enough misgivings for the crew. Then there's Valkerie's declining of Bob's on-Mars, live-on-international-TV marriage proposal. So both of them are at odds. But most disappointing is Kennedy-he's back to being an absolute jerk. Like the crew, I had just begun to like him at the end of Oxygen. But don't think I was disappointed in the novel altogether. Not so. The Fifth Man is undoubtedly even better than its prequel. The Olson / Ingermanson duo have done even more homework for this mission, weaving science facts in with a little knowledge of Martian geography; everything is incredibly realistic. But this is also science fiction with characters you want to like-and I just found Kennedy's behavior depressing. Like one other The Fifth Man reviewer, any readers who expect to see huge tentacles come snaking out of anyplace aren't necessarily going to find them. This is Christian fiction, after all, and many Christ-believers don't hold to the idea of life outside of Earth. (The theology for this is simple: the Earth is the center of God's focus. Postulations about other planetary civilizations and even Narnia-like parallel worlds are interesting, but the Bible says nothing about these. One could say that if there were Martians, for example, Christ would have to incarnate as a perfect Martian to die for their sins . . . this seems absurd, to say the least. But who's to say there isn't any "life" on Mars - not necessarily creatures with reasoning capability, but in the form of tiny organisms such as those Valkerie finds early in the novel? Evolution-believers would explain it as even more proof that life evolved there also. But as Bob explains to Valkerie, so what? All we would know is that the organisms are there; it doesn't prove any more evolution except to those who interpret it that way.) I found it difficult to locate The Fifth Man's exact climax, because it seems to encompass the entire latter half of the story! In addition to the unknown being, the crew has to deal with an apparent raving space loon . . . and of course the conspiracies on Earth threaten the mission even further . . . and will the crew even be affected by back-contamination from unknown Martian microbes? Everything is weaved together perfectly. Every circumstance has an explanation. The unanswered plot questions left over from the original Oxygen are also resolved perfectly. Regardless, we still don't have the Ares 10 crew safely on terra firma once again. Oxygen and The Fifth Man are spectacular enough, setting new standards in Christian fiction . . . but would The Oxygen Trilogy not sound even more impressive? I'm holding my breath.
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by Randall Ingermanson
by Randall Ingermanson
by John B. Olson
by Randall Ingermanson
by John B. Olson
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