Rating: 
Summary: An Updated "Have Spacesuite..." - light, but quick and fun!
Review: If you liked "Have Spacesuite Will Travel" when you were a kid, this is an updated version of the same basic story - kids going to outer space - with an updated psuedo-science patchwork plugging up the many, many holes of this storyline. If you're willing to take some major claims for granted (for example, little things like unlimited energy), this is a fun story and a quick page turner - quite different from Varley's more complex works such as Wizard and Titan. However, if you're too critical, you will not enjoy this story.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice Heinlein-homage, but runs low on rocket-fuel
Review: Rating: 3.5 stars The first SF book John Varley ever read was Heinlein's RED PLANET. RED THUNDER is his tribute to RP, and ROCKET SHIP GALILEO, and HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL, and all the other wonderful Heinlein juveniles that SF readers of a Certain Age cut their teeth on. Anyway, as you've probably figured out by now, a bunch of likeable Florida teens get together and build a homemade spaceship, a couple decades from now -- with the help of a cashiered NASA astronaut and his idiot-savant cousin, Jubal, who's discovered a vacuum-energy shunt. With free, unlimited energy, just about anything can fly, even a spaceship made of used railroad tank-cars... OK, the framing plot doesn't bear close inspection, and the air kinda leaks out of the tale once Red Thunder lifts off, but for 3/4 of the book RT is GREAT, the Pure Quill, a delight to read. The kid's spaceship would work, given the One Impossible Thing that makes this SF. The other problems of spaceflight were solved long ago, and if you could fly to Mars & back in a week, you wouldn't need sophisticated life support. Watching the crew solve the practical problems of building a spaceship in their garage -- actually a large, vacant warehouse -- and on a tight budget ($$ & time -- see note 1) makes for classic golden-age SF. Once they get to Mars, the story turns perfunctory, as if Varley lost interest. The Chinese and American astronauts are pure cardboard. There's the obligatory Space Rescue, for high drama. There's an oddly-anachronistic bit of Red-baiting, which I found distasteful. Then the return home, to fame and riches. Eh. Varley's too good a writer to leave the downside of Free Energy! unexamined, and he tosses in a neat bit from Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION, but his solution to keeping the dirt-cheap megatons (PyrE) away from the bad guys, while it might work, reads like a UN press-release. Better to have left that to our imagination, I think. In fact, if I'd been Varley's Stern Editor, I'd have ended the novel when Red Thunder lands on Mars, and outline everything after in the Epilogue. Still, there's more than enough Right Stuff here to make RED THUNDER worth reading, though longtime Varley fans may find the book a bit of a letdown. Better, perhaps, to ignore the Famous Name, and enjoy the tale for what it is, a fine, flawed, nostalgic remake of a childhood classic.
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Note 1) Varley uses time pressure for dramatic purposes, but here's what he, and all the space pros really think: "Say Columbus took the Apollo route to the New World. He starts off with three ships. Along about the Canary Islands he sinks the first ship, just throws it away, deliberately. And it's his biggest ship. Come to the Bahamas, he throws away the second ship. He reaches the New World.... but his third ship can't land there. He lowers a lifeboat, sinks the third ship, and rows ashore. He picks up a few rocks on the beach, and rows right back out to sea, across the Atlantic.... and at the Strait of Gibraltar he sinks the lifeboat and swims back to Spain with an inner tube around his shoulders." Review copyright 2003 by Peter D. Tillman
First published at SF Site
Rating: 
Summary: "Tom Swift" Launches "Rocketship Galileo"!
Review: One of The Master's (R.A. Heinlein) favorite sayings was, "There is seldom any truly new writings anymore. Nowadays, they just file off the numbers and slap on a new coat of paint!" John Varley doesn't just borrow from the Heinlein juvenile (if he really does) with new numbers & paint, he does a hot-rod engine transplant and complete overhaul, resulting in a brand new vehicle more in tune with the 21st century (even though you have to take some of the new technology with a grain of salt!) Combining an ex-patriate NASA astronaut, a genius-savant inventor (strangely named after one of Heinlein's best known), three disadvantaged overachievers, and "Lil' Miss Reech Beech", Varley spins a tale to be enjoyed by hard-core Sci-Fi fans from 8 to 80. Maybe not an award-winning class effort, but still an entertaining tale that is quite hard to put down!
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Summary: Home-built Spaceship to Mars`
Review: Red Thunder is a science fiction novel about a home-built spaceship joining the race to Mars. Manny, Dak, Kelly, and Alicia are spacenuts. They live down the highway from Cape Canaveral and ramble over in Dak's Blue Thunder at least twice a week to watch the launches. One day, they head over to the beach after the launch, fly low across the packed sand, and run over a man lying on the ground. Well, they think they did and get the scare of their lives from it, but the man is really unhurt. Drunk as a skunk, but otherwise OK. Checking out his ID to determine his home address, they discover that he is a Travis Broussard, an Astronaut Colonel and NASA chief pilot. They take him to his home and leave him with a small cajun man who looks like an elf, then return to their own homes. Manny lives with his mother and aunt in the Blast-Off Motel, which they own. Manny occupies room 201, the one with the toilet from hell. Fifty years ago, the Blast-Off had a ocean view from every room, but then the Golden Manatee resort was built directly across the highway, all twenty stories of it. Needless to say, money has been tight lately. There is just not enough to send Manny to a decent technical college. Dak also has money problems. His father owns a car repair business and is a wizard at fixing cars up to pass the emissions standards. Dak has his own business in a two-car garage behind the main repair shop: Daktari's Custom Speed Shop, where Blue Thunder was designed and built. Business is steady, but not lucrative enough to pay for tech school. Kelly, on the other hand, is the only daughter of the biggest luxury car dealer in northeast Florida. She drives a green Porshe 921 and works as chief bookkeeper for her father's dealership, but her relationship with her father is strictly business. She can afford to go to college anywhere, but has put it off so far. She and Manny have a compatible relationship, but the discrepancy in income levels adds a little shakiness now and then. Alicia has had it the worst. Her father murdered her mother and is now in Raiford prison, leaving her effectively an orphan. As a result, Alicia is now deadset against drinking anything alcoholic. Eventually, the foursome return to the Broussard ranchero for food and fun. Alicia begins to dry out Travis. They learn that the elf is Jubal, Travis' cousin, and come to like and respect him, particularly for his friendly attitude (except when he is working). Jubal is a mechanical and technical genius, able to fix anything and to invent truly amazing things; Travis has been living for years off his agent's share of the royalties and other incomes from the inventions. Jubal also begins to reciprocate their feelings, so he shows them his Squeezer! This novel has been compared to Rocket Ship Galileo and has a number of parallels with the Heinlein classic, not to mention oblique and obvious references to other Heinlein books. However, the story also harks back to the naive genius stories during the pulp era, such as Leinster's Bud Gregory stories, and the even earlier Tom Swift dime novels. The Squeezer is the basis for a space drive, but Travis and his crew have to built the rest of the ship from unlikely components and scrounged parts. In the Heinlein story, the ship was acquired essentially intact and ready to fly, only needing the drive and some additional electronics; in this novel, the task is more difficult and requires more ingenuity. Naturally, Travis and his crew are being sought by almost every intelligence and investigative service in the country. Jubal has to hide out at the Blast-Off and even fixes the toilet in Manny's room. The extended Broussard clan helps out on the preparations and the concealment. This is an entirely different type of SF book than the author's usual product. I strongly suspect it was a fun story to write and it *is* a fun story to read. Recommended for Varley fans and for anyone else who likes tales about building a spaceship from scratch while avoiding government agents and then flying off to the planets.
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Summary: Rocketship Red Thunder
Review: It's got to be a mark of genius when an author writes a novel whose entire premiss is a cliché - and makes it work. John Varley's "Red Thunder" is just such a novel. It demonstrates that cliché isn't necessarily the kiss of death in the hands of an artist, when that artist is aware of his literary heritage, and loves and respects it. Thus, in this joyful work, cliché transforms itself into a loving tribute to those who came before. Varley's intent is immediately clear on the dedication page which mentions the name of the Grand Master, Robert A. Heinlein. The spirit of Heinlein infuses Red Thunder with a sense of familiarity and steely-eyed wonder, yet Varley does not slavishly adhere to all the old scripts. For instance, Heinlein's "Competent Man" figure is here split into two separate characters, one an alcoholic ex-astronaut, the other a semi-autistic genius/tinkerer, both deeply flawed and sympathetic individuals. Consider the name assigned to the autistic genius: Jubal, short for Jubilation. The name, of course, evokes Heinlein's Jubal Harshaw in "Stranger in a Strange Land," a character so resourceful he often seemed omnipotent. Not so Jubilation, who is so incompetent he can't even care for himself without the aid of his cousin, an astronaut drummed out of NASA and into drunken obscurity. We meet Captain Travis Broussard while our four young protagonists are joy riding at night along a Florida beach. The narrative says, "And that's when we ran over the guy," passed out in the sand. However, Broussard survives and even benefits from the encounter. The four young main characters are not typically Heinleinesque either. For one thing they deal with racial issues in ways that Heinlein never addressed, as far as I know. Two girls and two boys, all some mixture of Hispanic, or black, or white, and all suffering from a high school education so inadequate they don't even qualify for college. But they're all bright youngsters now struggling to catch up. Another difference is the way Varley deals with their sexuality. As near as I recall, the most one of Heinlein's young characters could hope for was a kiss on the cheek. Not so in "Red Thunder" in which one of the girls dresses as a hooker as a prelude to sex with her boyfriend. Despite these variations on the theme, everything else is here by the bushel. Four young people, an ex-astronaut, and an idiot savant build a spaceship on the cheap - not quite in the back yard, but close enough for gov'ment work. And this is after Jubal invents a something-for-nothing energy source that makes the whole thing plausible. Buy the book. Read it. Hang on for the ride. You'll like it. Thanks ya'll.
Rating: 
Summary: Rocketship Galileo meets Salvage One
Review: John Varley has a reputation for writing imaginative, clever, and thought-provoking science fiction. His eight-worlds stories have become classics, and he has helped lift science fiction out of the realm of pulp. Unfortunately Varley's most recent book, Red Thunder, is a step backwards. The book tries to be an homage to Heinlein's classic stories of the 1950s, and does manage to capture the feel of those stories, but those books are very dated by today's standards. Red Thunder reads like a cross between a rant and a Saturday morning cartoon. Varley tells the story of how a group of young men and women in their late teens meet up with an astronaut who was drummed out of NASA and his cousin: a brilliant genius who has invented a new wonder fuel that makes space travel even easier than commuting by Metro in Paris. This group of misfits go on to build a spaceship, fly to Mars, and revolutionize the way humanity lives. Varley's writing is excellent, but the story is very weak, the science is bad, and the political commentary just gets in the way of the plot and characterizations. It would be a shame if John Varley has gone the way of Larry Niven, but Red Thunder suggests that he has.
Rating: 
Summary: An utter disappointment..
Review: While I have thoroughly enjoyed John Varley's other books, this one was a major letdown. The technology is {bad} and not outrageous enough to be believable. The characters are just too earnest and predictable, and don't really develop during the story. I really wish I had waited for the paperback to come out instead of buying it in hardcover...
Rating:
Summary: undeniably powerful storytelling
Review: I don't know what JV has been doing for the last 20 years, but I hope this novel marks a new invigoration in his writing. Back to the basics works for many artists. There is real storytelling power here, like in "Millennium" (not the movie!). Sure, it's sometimes dumb, and sometimes silly, and sometimes maudlin, and shamelessly steals from "Armaggeddon" and other movies. But it works, and you will remember scenes and ideas from it probably for a long time. What if - someone did invent new history-changing technology in their pole-barn? Why isn't that possible?
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Summary: John Varley's "Rocketship Galileo"
Review: I've always loved Robert Heinlein's "Rocketship Galileo". Sure, it's the weakest of his juveniles, since he was just learning to write for that market. But it is the first Heinlein novel I ever read at the tender age of seven and for my money it is still the best damned Atomic Nazi's on the Moon SF novel ever written. So it was with great pleasure that I read John Varley's "Red Thunder". "Red Thunder" is set in the near future, our protagonists are Manny, Dak, Kelly, Travis, Alicia and Jubal who manage to take a breakthrough in physics discovered by the brilliant but wildly impractical Jubal and turn it into a working space ship. The book reads like an updated "Rocketship Galileo" except the characters drink, get laid and deal with a far more realistic world and problems than Heinlein's foursome ever did. Buy this book, sit back and enjoy the ride, it will make you wish that Varley were a more prolific writer.
Rating:
Summary: Improbable, uplifting fun
Review: Despite the physics of the propulsion system, which may as well be called magic this is close to being the perfect, modern Heinlein juvenile science fiction work. All that prevents it from being a true juvenile is Varley's apparent inability to write a book without gratuitous sex, and kinky sex at that. A fine cast of characters, both the "adults" and the "kids" are given enough depth to be realistic and they all have their problems, personal and financial. Almost all of them are delightfully quirky and pretty likeable. The plot is a bit slow until the climax, the book perhaps a bit too long, or perhaps too short as the climax is quick. However, from liftoff in a Florida bay to Mars to the epilog is pure magic and presents a future of easy interstellar expoloration and colonization we can hope to have one day. The ending is particularly well done in avoiding any cop outs. Some characters do very well, some less well, familial conflicts from the past do not always get resolved despite their success. The resolutions or lack of for each character will be pleasing to most readers though. Finishing this book you'll feel good, about the book, about yourself, about the characters and about humanity and our future. It was good enough to lift even my spirits and I'm a pretty downbeat guy.
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