Return to Mars

Rating:
Summary: A nice chance to let the mind fly
Review: I read the first book on my vacation. I got really hungry. I was thrilled about the possibilities the ancient willage could offer. All the time I read this second book, I waited for what Jamie and the others would find once the cliff dwellings were explored. It left me a litttle short. I am no autor, but it would have been extremly exiting if the book had had an ending that had pointed to a third book in the series. One illogical detail was the easiness with which Dex and Possum found the mars path finder. On their way there their rower was almost covered with dust after a single dust storm, but the pathfinder itself - after all these years -was not covered with any dust at all. Nevertheless I had a few very exiting moments reading the book. And I really hope that Mr Bova comes out with a third book where there would be a link of somekind between our sivilization and that of Mars. Any commnts gladly taken! [e-mail].

Rating:
Summary: If you liked "Mars" then you will also enjoy this sequel.
Review: I really liked the novel and it was difficult for me to put down. The technology is not so advance from what we have today so the story seems all the more believable. It is easy to really get into the story and sort of feel how it would be to be there on Mars in the not too distant future.

I very much very much recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: I think I see a Mars3 on the horizon
Review: I've been reading for so long that I can remember when a novel just ENDED. Ben Bova is an author that I enjoy, so I can't complain.I read 'Mars' also. If there should be a third novel in this series, I'll read it.If only to see if all things are resolved in that book.

Rating:
Summary: I never realized superficiality could run so deep.
Review: If you have ever been unclear about the definition of "stereotype", read this book. From the deeply spiritual Indian(Waterman) to the rapacious, overbearing capitalist(Trumball Sr.), each major character was a carefully crafted melange of superficiality and blandness. The prequel to this book had all these elements but they superseded by the scientific elements. The speculative exploration of Olympus Mons could have been interesting but had to be sacrificed to make room for the broadsides at Trumball and capitalists in general. I reccomend the first. I regret my impulse buy of this one.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have read this year.
Review: In a word: Brilliant! In three words: I enjoyed it. I started the book as bed-time reading, but found (to my wife's disgust) that it was keeping me awake at night. In the end, I had to devote a Saturday morning to finishing the book for domestic harmony.

If your idea of a good read is a slam-bang space opera with cardboard characters, this is not the book for you. But if you like your books to be thoughtful and thought-provoking, with excellent characterization, then this is the one.

Bova's strength is his ability to really make the characters in his books come to life. The scientists in the novel were just like some of my friends, struggling with the issue of how do you get someone to pay for your hobby and indignant that someone might actually want to make a profit from it. The mystery and tension built throughout the novel, making it harder and harder to put down. It was great.

I am looking forward to reading Bova's next novel.

Rating:
Summary: Great story brought downy by author's agenda...
Review: In Bova's original "Mars", the first human explorers escape the red planet after they had discovered life upon it - a mindless green lichen that hints at the possibilities of colonization. The team's unofficial leader, native american Jamie Waterman made what promises to be a major discovery of his own - steps apparently cut into the side of a martian cliff. Now returning on an expedition financed by a sinister billionaire with his own plans for Mars, Waterman looks to follow-up his last discovery. Now the team leader (due to his experience on the other trip) Waterman commands a crew that will search for patterns among the martian lichen, further map mars and climb Olympus, the highest mountain in the solar system.

Unable to walk the cliff-steps himself in "Mars", Waterman waits years to return to Mars and make that ascent into the cliff wall and history. In doing so, he stands not only to discover intelligent life but perhaps add substance to an ancient tribal legend that the dead red world and the blue on which they were born are actually brothers of a sort. What lies at the top of the stairs adds tension to the story, one not spoiled when Waterman - pressure suit and all - takes that giant step.

Although Jamie's thoughts of the martians - which soon rise to the point of mystical visions - are evocative and would have made for a great novel, their dragged down by other elements brought in by Ben Bova, whether to shore up a better novel Bova thought beyond him, or simply to push some agenda. Here, the greatest enemy is not some evil martian, or the natural dangers of an alien world, but Trumball, the expedition's bankroller, who threatens (gasp!!) to bring tourism to Mars (which is unlikely, since most on Earth can follow the expedition with their VR glasses and without subjecting themselves to the dangers of the trip) and spoil...whatever tourists spoil. Bova pretty much downgrades all those back on Earth as uneducated boobs who don't know anything they don't see on VR. He piously leads the fight against increased exploration to Mars, even though that would improve the chances of discovering more martian cities or other signs of their civilization. Though Trumball is on Earth, his son fights for him on Mars, rivaling Waterman at every turn (including love, with Waterman's prospective conquests falling to the brat's boyish charm before they even reach Mars). Dex Trumball, as a typical Bova charachter, gets little in the development treatment (his turnabout at the book's end isn't so much a charachter development as it is simply the author's changing his mind for him), and his early martian plans are an obvious clue that his mercenary plans for Mars are modeled on Cortes. (Setting out for the landing sites of 1997's Martian Pathfinder, Trumball announces his intention to salvage it for the cash). Realizing that the War against Tourism isn't enough for a story, Bova tosses in another element - the Coyote: the spirit of malice that will seek to undermine the mission and perhaps kill its members off. In short, somebody on the team isn't what he seems. Small accidents are followed by larger ones, clueing Waterman in that they've got a sabouteur on Mars. But even this idea seems like filler, and the resolution is pretty pat for the tension that Bova wants to generate. By the end of the book, the only enduring thing about it is the strikingly patronizing tone it saves for those back on their easy chairs on Earth - a tone reminescent of that used against religious-minded (but actually hypocritical) zealots in Bova's "Moonrise" series. Bova isn't so much concerned about discovering anything new on Mars as he is putting a wide moral chasm between his heroes and those who are simply greedy, ignorant or mindlessly zealous. This could have been a much better book, but Bova's tortuous morality grounds it.

Rating:
Summary: Great story brought downy by author's agenda...
Review: In Bova's original "Mars", the first human explorers escape the red planet after they had discovered life upon it - a mindless green lichen that hints at the possibilities of colonization. The team's unofficial leader, native american Jamie Waterman made what promises to be a major discovery of his own - steps apparently cut into the side of a martian cliff. Now returning on an expedition financed by a sinister billionaire with his own plans for Mars, Waterman looks to follow-up his last discovery. Now the team leader (due to his experience on the other trip) Waterman commands a crew that will search for patterns among the martian lichen, further map mars and climb Olympus, the highest mountain in the solar system.

Unable to walk the cliff-steps himself in "Mars", Waterman waits years to return to Mars and make that ascent into the cliff wall and history. In doing so, he stands not only to discover intelligent life but perhaps add substance to an ancient tribal legend that the dead red world and the blue on which they were born are actually brothers of a sort. What lies at the top of the stairs adds tension to the story, one not spoiled when Waterman - pressure suit and all - takes that giant step.

Although Jamie's thoughts of the martians - which soon rise to the point of mystical visions - are evocative and would have made for a great novel, their dragged down by other elements brought in by Ben Bova, whether to shore up a better novel Bova thought beyond him, or simply to push some agenda. Here, the greatest enemy is not some evil martian, or the natural dangers of an alien world, but Trumball, the expedition's bankroller, who threatens (gasp!!) to bring tourism to Mars (which is unlikely, since most on Earth can follow the expedition with their VR glasses and without subjecting themselves to the dangers of the trip) and spoil...whatever tourists spoil. Bova pretty much downgrades all those back on Earth as uneducated boobs who don't know anything they don't see on VR. He piously leads the fight against increased exploration to Mars, even though that would improve the chances of discovering more martian cities or other signs of their civilization. Though Trumball is on Earth, his son fights for him on Mars, rivaling Waterman at every turn (including love, with Waterman's prospective conquests falling to the brat's boyish charm before they even reach Mars). Dex Trumball, as a typical Bova charachter, gets little in the development treatment (his turnabout at the book's end isn't so much a charachter development as it is simply the author's changing his mind for him), and his early martian plans are an obvious clue that his mercenary plans for Mars are modeled on Cortes. (Setting out for the landing sites of 1997's Martian Pathfinder, Trumball announces his intention to salvage it for the cash). Realizing that the War against Tourism isn't enough for a story, Bova tosses in another element - the Coyote: the spirit of malice that will seek to undermine the mission and perhaps kill its members off. In short, somebody on the team isn't what he seems. Small accidents are followed by larger ones, clueing Waterman in that they've got a sabouteur on Mars. But even this idea seems like filler, and the resolution is pretty pat for the tension that Bova wants to generate. By the end of the book, the only enduring thing about it is the strikingly patronizing tone it saves for those back on their easy chairs on Earth - a tone reminescent of that used against religious-minded (but actually hypocritical) zealots in Bova's "Moonrise" series. Bova isn't so much concerned about discovering anything new on Mars as he is putting a wide moral chasm between his heroes and those who are simply greedy, ignorant or mindlessly zealous. This could have been a much better book, but Bova's tortuous morality grounds it.

Rating:
Summary: Reasonably good sequel; competent audio reading
Review: In RETURN TO MARS, Anglo-Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman leads the second expedition to the Red Planet. Riding a privately funded, cheaper spacecraft with a smaller crew, the eight multinational explorers set up a habitat, plant a garden, and set out on several missions by land and by what passes for air. One such expedition is into a caldera on Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the solar system. Another ventures to the Mars Pathfinder landing site to reclaim the 40-year-old hardware as a priceless museum piece. Waterman leads a trek to Ares Vallis, where on the first expedition he saw what he thought was an ancient cliff dwelling. Throughout all this activity, things start going wrong, and a crew member becomes paranoid about real or imagined sabotage. Other crew members fall in love, or lust, and yet others become occupied with the future exploitation of Mars as a tourist trap.

Bova keeps the action going; the plot seems a little more polished than that of the first book. He also wisely avoids medical detail, his Achilles heel in MARS and in other books. He continues to handle the politics of space travel deftly, and his grip on the physics is also sound. The characters are one-and-a-half dimensional, and the mystery aspect of the novel does not compare with the quality of non-sf mystery novels. Still, the end is satisfying and uplifting.

In this unabridged audio version, the very competent Dick Hill returns as reader. A master of international accents, Hill meets this polyglot challenge nicely. However, I thought that his work here was not quite the tour de force of the first book. A couple of characterizations are so off-target they are somewhat funny. Latino astronaut Tomas Rodriguez sounds like the Taco Bell chihuahua, and African American astronaut Pete Connors comes across like James Earl Jones doing Darth Vader.

Rating:
Summary: Return to Nowhere
Review: In the tradition of Western writers Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour, science fiction author Ben Bova knows how to put you into a setting and make it real. One dimensional characters are the rule with all three writers, but with the Western guys that was OK because the setting WAS the story.

Not so with Mr. Bova. His often and loudly trumpeted agenda gets in the way. It goes something like this: Archaeology is OK. Tourism is not OK. The only way science can get the money to explore is to participate in the destruction of that which they are exploring in order to get more money to continue to explore, etc. etc. We MUST explore Mars, but we can't make it worth our while economically since this would feed the pockets of the evil Capitalist swine back on Earth who fund the program which is the only way we can continue to explore mars, and we MUST explore mars, and so on ad nauseum. It is up to Jamie Waterman, 1/2 Navaho, to try to keep the funding for Mars explorations while (despite the efforts of the evil Capitalist Dex who evidently wants to turn the entire planet into a huge McDonald's) save the land for the exclusive use of the long dead spirits of his ancestral cliff-dwellers. Huh? Gimme a break.

The "message" part of this book reads as if it were written by a high school kid who is newly ablaze with mysticism and desire to save the ecology. It's like Al Gore meets Arthur C. Clark. Strange bedfellows. What's next, Mr. Spock meets Hillary Clinton for the cosmic clash: "Live long and prosper despite having to pay for Universal Galactic Health Care"?

Also, doesn't Bova have an editor? Why tell us about that newfangled fuel cell twice? Why use the term "There is that" fifteen times? What is this word "dint" for "didn't"?

Anyway, Bova has a knack for putting you there in an alien environment, but after you look around in wonder for a few minutes, you wonder if you want to stay. With Waterman, Dex and Ben Bova's other characters I dint enjoy my Return to Mars.

Rating:
Summary: ALmost as good as the first one
Review: It was with great anticipation that I plopped on the couch to read the sequel to MARS and found myself disappointed from the start because many of the characters from the first book were not along for the second voyage. Still, the story was compelling enough that I found it hard to put the book down.

As with the previous story, Bova populates the second book with a multicultural crew, some of whom are odds with each other and helps to create some tension. Another vehicle Bova uses to add to the suspense is to start off some of the chapters with unsigned diary entries by a troubled and disturbed crew member. I have to admit that I was not able to figure out which crew member it was.

Again, Bova handles the science part of the story well, especially the exploration and theories behind Jamie's cliff dwellings. It is a relief that they were not advanced aliens with laser guns and stuff like that, but rather a primitive culture snuffed out by a celestial event like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. All in all, RETURN TO MARS is a good read, and if you liked the first book, then I recommend this one as well.

If Hollywood decides to make a movie based upon the books, I think it would be better to condense both books into one movie with a single voyage. My cast choice for Jamie Waterman would be Benjamin Bratt and Rachel Leigh Cook would be perfect as Joanne Brumado. Courtney Vance could be Connors. I haven't thought of the others yet.