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Summary: A manned trip to Mars - 15 years ago!
Review: I suppose I'm glad Stephen Baxter didn't manage to become an astronaut! I think he is still longing to go into space, and his novels give him -and us - the opportunity to go after all.This longing is very obvious in 'Voyage'. Baxter decides to take a crucial point in the history of the U.S. space program - Kennedy's call to go to the moon and Mars. Kennedy here survives the assassination attempt and goes on proclaiming manned space missions. At the end of the sixties, Nixon decides to expand the manned missions to go to Mars as well... A fever possesses NASA. Almost everything goes to Ares - the name for the Mars mission. And almost a generation later, in the mid-eighties, 'man' (i.e. woman) stands on Mars... Ohhh yes, it would have been so nice. The Ares mission to Mars has an expensive price ticket. A lot of other missions have to be cancelled, there is simply not enough money for them in the NASA budget. So, there are never more then just three Apollo missions; there is no space shuttle. Many other missions are cut down: no Magellan to Venus, no Voyagers 1 & 2 to the gas giants. We don't know anything about them that we do know in our own universe. Are we better off in this alternate universe? Maybe not for non-Martian planetary scientists. But by going to Mars so soon, NASA and at least the U.S. commit themselves to the red planet - and maybe other nation will get Mars fever as well, and start lowering their weapon budgets. I suppose NASA in the 'Voyage' universe will get a huge increase in their post-Ares budget Buy and read this book!
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Summary: Highly enjoyable flight of fancy
Review: I'm a hard sci fi fan and was a little worried about reading an "alternate history" novel but this worked. Baxter's attention to detail, both historical and technical, makes this story believable. Given our current track record with Mars I think these guys would more likely have died an ugly death using Apollo technology to try to get there but my disbelief was suspended and I enjoyed the ride.
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Summary: Good story, but oh how boring!
Review: I've read all Baxter's other books and I think he's one of the best authors yet. However you just can't win them all. I had expected a bit more exploration and science on the Mars surface but the more closer t th end you get you feel like they will never get there. Although the technical details are very accurate they don't give anything more than more words to read. If you want to read a godd book read Ring and The Time Ships. They are his best.
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Summary: Uh...Wow....I guess
Review: If Tom Clancy is the "Tom Clancy" of warfare, Baxter may be his equal in Engineering. The book is written in near scholarly text when explaining the nueclear rockets, and chemical propellant vehicles that mankind would have used to go to Mars in the 1980's. That was a turn-off. Another turn-off is the non-chronological sequence the story is told in. The first passages have the crew that is going to Mars on the pad. Then the book retreats from there to when Natalie York, Mission Specialist and one of the many protagonists in the book, decided to become an astronaut. And then it comes back to different points in the Mars Mission inter-mixed with the life stories of the other two Mars explorers going to the Red Planet with her, the bids to build the hardware going on the voyage, the shakeups at NASA, even York's search for an apartment near NASA. It would have been better if it was told from point A to B. I found this to be a terrible way to have to read the book. For instance, you knew the Nueclear rocket program had it's problems before he wrote about them since it was explained earlier in the book. On the plus side, and there are many plusses, the book explains from an "insider's" viewpoint what these astronauts go through. It isn't pretty. The sterile appearance of the space program is stripped away with broad strokes. These people are street fighters who look at competitiveness as one of the four food groups. The politics of NASA, the in-fighting, the seemingly ordinary choices these men and women made that would effect how history books are written decades later are described in hard-headed, unromantic terms. All at once you are enamored and a little bothered at what is written. "Could it be that superficial and heroic at the same time?" was a question I kept asking myself. And then there is the subtext of the book. Let's go to Mars. We knew we could do it in the 1970's and the fact that we haven't done it has deposited this country at a destination that is subordinate to its destiny.
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Summary: Uh...Wow....I guess
Review: If Tom Clancy is the "Tom Clancy" of warfare, Baxter may be his equal in Engineering. The book is written in near scholarly text when explaining the nueclear rockets, and chemical propellant vehicles that mankind would have used to go to Mars in the 1980's. That was a turn-off. Another turn-off is the non-chronological sequence the story is told in. The first passages have the crew that is going to Mars on the pad. Then the book retreats from there to when Natalie York, Mission Specialist and one of the many protagonists in the book, decided to become an astronaut. And then it comes back to different points in the Mars Mission inter-mixed with the life stories of the other two Mars explorers going to the Red Planet with her, the bids to build the hardware going on the voyage, the shakeups at NASA, even York's search for an apartment near NASA. It would have been better if it was told from point A to B. I found this to be a terrible way to have to read the book. For instance, you knew the Nueclear rocket program had it's problems before he wrote about them since it was explained earlier in the book. On the plus side, and there are many plusses, the book explains from an "insider's" viewpoint what these astronauts go through. It isn't pretty. The sterile appearance of the space program is stripped away with broad strokes. These people are street fighters who look at competitiveness as one of the four food groups. The politics of NASA, the in-fighting, the seemingly ordinary choices these men and women made that would effect how history books are written decades later are described in hard-headed, unromantic terms. All at once you are enamored and a little bothered at what is written. "Could it be that superficial and heroic at the same time?" was a question I kept asking myself. And then there is the subtext of the book. Let's go to Mars. We knew we could do it in the 1970's and the fact that we haven't done it has deposited this country at a destination that is subordinate to its destiny.
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Summary: Another good concept ruined
Review: It's a good idea for a plot, and it certainly deserves better than the truly cringeworthy prose offered. I know nothing of Baxter other than this book, but it seems he's a much better technical writer than a prose writer. His charaters are truly cardboard cutouts, making their melodramatic internal monologues laughable. The worst part is the frequent lapses into British English. Baxter duns us over the head, again and again, how NASA is chock full of cornfed Midwesterners and drawling Texans, then gives them dialog like "rubbish," "mucking about," and "pieces of kit." Right. The jacket copy touts how much research Baxter did to achieve technical authenticity. I'm sure he did, as the technical verbiage is often stultifying in its detail. I guess he didn't devote as much effort to dialogue.
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Summary: Great portrayal of Mars promises made years ago
Review: Loved this book! Like many of us, I was taught in school that we would make it to Mars by the 1980s. I really enjoyed how Baxter's book took me back to those childhood dreams. Later as an adult, I went on to work with the Shuttle project in Houston, and it was wonderful for someone to portray how my career and the JSC environment could have evolved, had we kept those childhood promises. I'm looking forward to a sequel.
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Summary: A Fascinating Hypothesis
Review: Many people who consider the phrase science fiction to be populated by Star Trek-ish characters and zap guns will be pleasantly surprised by this novel. Writers have always done a "what-if" regarding the Kennedy assassination, but Mr. Baxter has done a remarkable what-if in regards to NASA and the possibility of a Mars mission. In fact, NASA is the only entity to have actually been affected by Kennedy's survival; everything else -- Vietnam, Watergate, and every other political moment -- has remained surprisingly intact. The characters are true to life and the situations mirror what NASA might have done to prepare for a Mars landing, the blunders it might have made that are chillingly similar to the ones they made that lead to the Challenger disaster, and the ultimate soaring of the American and human spirit once success had been achieved. The only drawback is the technical writing; Mr. Baxter goes into perhaps too much detail on the technical aspects of the NASA missions, but not enough to detract from the human drama.
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Summary: A past we could have had!
Review: Since reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson I have been drawn back into the world of science-fiction. Voyage, by Stephen Baxter, is not so much science-fiction, rather an alternative science-past. The book commences in 1963 the year that John F Kennedy is shot - the difference this time is that he survives. Under that scenario the American push into space takes on a different path to that which we now read in history textbooks. The book cuts back and forward between the events of the 1960's, 70's and 80's and that of the astronaut in 1986 making their way to Mars. Unfortunately the former is much stronger than the latter and you feel as if you are reading two books at once; one by a good author and the other so-so. I could have done without the back and forward and read a much better account of the trip to Mars. Baxter should be congratulated though for writing a unique and interesting book that makes you sit back and think about what could have been. Something the space activists of today keep reminding us.
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Summary: It's a good thing we didn't go!
Review: Stephen Baxter had never let me down - until this made-for-TV melodrama. The characters are stock. We have the "female scientist fighting a misogynous system". We have the "tortured, emotionally stagnant elderly physicist". And don't forget the "geeky gearhead" and his not-so-geeky astronaut buddy, both of whom would desperately like to get into the pants of the aforementioned female scientist. This book is billed as a "What should have been" look at NASA's Apollo-era plans for the Red Planet. By the end of this novel you'll be thanking the powers-that-were that a Mars landing never took place in 1986. The mission's cost - a cutting back on Apollo, the cancellation of the Voyager and other planetary probes, and the general stagnation in scientific development that might have occured would hardly be worth the end result. Even Baxter's writing - usually a near-flawless stream of graceful and technical prose - is surprisingly lowbrow here. Sure, he did his homework; the NASA alternate history is related in minute detail. But that's hardly enough to rescue this one. Do yourself a favor and pick up "The Time Ships" or one of his other, brilliant extrapolations. They say you're only as good as your last book. Not in this case. Baxter is a fantastic writer, and this kind of thing is beneath him.
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