Rating: 
Summary: Red Thunder, an Homage to Heinlein
Review: I haven't enjoyed a book as much as "Red Thunder" for a couple of years: I couldn't wait to get home from work to read it. Of course, I feel like that whenever John Varley produces a new work -- which is much too infrequently.Varley takes a step outside of his Eight Worlds mileau for a tribute to Robert Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo" and provides one of the best hard-science SF novels of the past decade. One of his qualities is combining *science* fiction with involving characters. "Red Thunder" is the story of a group of post-high school teens who have little direction or opportunity in their lives. By chance they encounter a washed-up astronaut and his savant-inventor cousin. As the Chinese are about to make the first landing on Mars, the cousin produces a new technology that gives the team a chance to cobble together a spaceship and beat the Chinese to Mars and rescue the NASA mission as well. A capsulization like that doesn't do justice to the depth and believeability of Varley's novel. It is hard not to draw comparisons between "Red Thunder" and Robert Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo" as well as other RAH works. The protagonist of "Thunder" is Hispanic and shares the first name of the narrator of "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." The theme of a group of teens building a spaceship is directly taken from "Galileo." There is even the parallel of encountering enemies from Earth on another planet. In "Galileo" it was Nazis, in "Thunder" it is Chinese communists. There are many other parallels to RAH works throughout the novel. "Thunder," as with all of Varley's works, brings both science and characters to life. The depth and backstory of each character is as interesting as the flights of scientific fancy Varley works through the book. A few strawmen appear in the guise of a rich-man father of one of the kids, a communist political officer, and a couple of FBI agents. But, this isn't a conflict between people as much as it is a tale of team pulling together to achieve a goal that none of them were capable of separately. While probably not written as a direct homage to "Galileo," it can be viewed as a mature version of many of Heinlein's "juveniles" with some updating for the 21st Century: where sex was forbidden in the Heinlein juveniles, Varley incorporates it as a realistic part of the lives of kids in the 18-20 year old range. For me, a comparison to one of RAH's juveniles is high praise indeed. For those have seen the diminution of hard-science SF works, "Red Thunder" is an oasis amid the desert of fantasy. Buy it, read it, and enjoy it. Half of the fun of the novel is finding the parallels in it and other SF. See if you can find the nod to the 1955 film "Conquest of Space."
Rating:
Summary: Wow ! Wow ! Wow !
Review: What a book ! I grew up on Heinlen juveniles, this is great addition to that section of science fiction. The squeezer drive is a great idea and building the spaceship out of railroad car tanks is a great idea. The story flows well and was difficult to put down (I was 45 minutes late to work Friday morning because of it.
Rating: 
Summary: What a waste!
Review: Absolute unmitigated crap. A near-total waste of time. Complete drivel. John Varley owes me $7.99, plus tax. Pardon the rant but I am SO disappointed in this book. For years I've considered Varley my favorite sci-fi author. Hell, I consider him one of my favorite authors of ANY genre. "Millenium" is my favorite time travel novel. The "Gaia" trilogy rocks. His "Eight Worlds" short stories are fantastic. I even liked "Steel Beach" and "The Golden Globe". I eagerly await his books and buy them the moment they're available (in paperback, that is.) Fact is, I'm a one-man John Varley fan club. So I was completely unprepared for the travesty that is "Red Thunder." I forced myself to read it to the end solely out of respect for Varley. If I wasn't violently opposed to book burning, I'd have put a match to it after the first 50 pages. Other reviewers have mentioned that the book is a homage to some of Heinlein's teenage oriented books. Perhaps my lack of appreciation of "Red Thunder" stems from my never having read any Heinlein other than "Stranger In a Strange Land" but I don't think that's the reason. I don't like it simply because the plot is inane, the characters two-dimensional and the resolution simplistic. Other than the base technology that powers the ship (the Squeeze drive), there's none of the characteristic Varley inventiveness. The book is just basic sci-fi pulp that could have been squeezed out by any hack. Maybe I hold Varley to too high a standard but I expected MUCH more from the mind that created Louise Baltimore, Cirocco Jones and Sparky Valentine. Please do yourself a favor and pass on "Red Thunder." If you're a Varley fan you'll hate it. If you're new to Varley, read his older better stuff. Of course, your mileage may differ.
Rating: 
Summary: Snappy Right-Stuff Space Story
Review: * I rarely read novels any more, I suppose mostly because
I read too many of them when I was younger. These days I
go more for video and comix if I'm slumming, reserving
text reading for historical and technical materials that
seem more worth the effort. However, something about John Varley's RED THUNDER caught
my eye and I picked it up. Partly I made a blunder because
I got him confused with a different writer that I really
liked, and only when I started into the book did I realize
that I remembered Varley from long ago as the author of
TITAN, which had interesting ideas but too much gratuitous
sexual content. Still, I kept on reading and found RED THUNDER to be very
good fun. There's really nothing all that new about the
story elements -- washed-up ex-astronaut; an idiot-savant
(more or less) from the boondocks with a revolutionary
invention that breaks all the rules (particularly conservation of
energy); and four youngsters (two guys, two girls) who
decide to get involved and make things happen ... resulting
in a homebrew mission to Mars that gives the authorities fits. However, Varley puts all this together neatly and it snaps
along very nicely. Indeed, it reminds me of reading some
of Heinlein's novels, when he was in good form -- and in
the decades since I have read any other Varley novel he
seems to have toned down the gratuitous sex to a manageable
level. (Of course, Heinlein at his worst basically defined
gratuitious sex, but I digress.) It is also about the
right length for a novel, not too brief to be satisfying,
not so long that the verbosity is tiresome. (When you
stop reading novels regularly, reading one can be a bit like
listening to somebody who just can't shut up.) I would actually like to see SCI-FI CHANNEL do a miniseries
on RED THUNDER, it being a bit too detailed to do well as
a movie. It would be straightforward -- the special effects
wouldn't be too burdensome, and the whole thing wouldn't
need big-ticket actors to be entertaining. Alas,
it's hard to believe the SFC would be even that daring
any longer.
Rating:
Summary: I was the first!
Review: Here's how brilliant John Varley is: Red Thuder is easily his weakest novel and it's still a dynamite read! The bizarre technology that permits a quartet of young Floridians and disgraced ex-Astronaut to become the first people to land on Mars is outrageously wacky yet presented with such detail it seems entirely plausible. The whole book has that wacky-yet-plausible vibe. Jubal, the genius who invents the new technology, is perhaps the most lovable character Varley's ever created, and it's a shame we don't get to see more of him in the book. Red Thunder is not as stuffed with invention as Varley's novels usually are nor is it as laugh-out-loud funny, but it's one hell of good yarn, and you'll enjoy every minute of it. I know I did.
Rating:
Summary: Not a Happy Camper
Review: John Varley is one of my favorite authors. I like his work so much, I actually bought this book before reading the reviews here. That was a mistake. This is juvenile fiction that's not even fit for juvenile's to read (i.e., too much sex). Some of the reviews compare this work to Heinlein's early, juvenile fiction, days. It just doesn't compute. Heinlein's early works were 1) interesting, and 2) not just for juvenile's but also boy-scoutish (i.e., clean). Varley's "Red Thunder" is neither. I can understand Varley's sexual themes in "Steel Beach" and "The Golden Globe:" he's writing about advanced, bored societies at an adult level. But, here, he's just going on and on about, essentially, the live's of a small group of late adolescents. Heck, it takes him over half the book to get to a point where the characters actually start to get ready to do what they're going to do. Note that I said "start to get ready," not "start:" the half-way point is when they actually get a glimmer of what they're going to do. What a bore. I suppose Varley figured he needed a bit of juvenile fiction to round out his audience base. Unfortunately, he would have been better served by cutting out the first 150 pages of the book and deleting all the sex. If he wanted "character" (hah) development with these kids, he should have ignored their poor, downtrodded lives and developed their characters while they actually did something that furthered the plot. Stay away from this book.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Heinlein
Review: Classic '60's Heinlein, only more so. Anyone expecting anything else, need not apply. I couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Good writer, bad book
Review: I got this book because I loved "Revelation Space" by the same author. I kept reading it because I thought something exciting would happen "soon". I kept being disappointed. There is nothing exciting here. There are no consequences. Perhaps I would have liked it 20 years ago when I was a young teenager?
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: I read a lot of science fiction. This is a light hearted interesting book even for those who do not "like" scifi! Would be good for young adults as well. Fun to read.
Rating: 
Summary: What Letdown!!
Review: I absolutely LOVED Golden Globe - thought it one of the best tales to come along in quite a while. Therefore I was eagerly awaiting this book. One day I saw it, bought it and rushed home. Varlay is stretching for shomespun, "ah shucks", humor in this one and he is stretching too far. Sure, one must give license to every science fiction book but this one takes the cake. You've heard/read/seen the story before told a million times and they are all interchangeable. A group of misfits pal around doing nothing much then something happens to set things off and they accomplish things that no mere scientist or engineer would even attempt. Most of the time these tales are movies for the 12-15 year old set but in this case Varlay attempts the same thing for adults and it just doesn't work. Jubal is too implausible, the structure doesn't make sense, the science is silly, the politics are all wrong and it takes about 15 cups of coffee just to get to some action. I swear we go up and down that beach enough times to plow to China. I had great hopes but it's like a dropout suddenly explaining how 3-D optical storage works.
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