The Martian Race

Rating:
Summary: Martian Race Great:; Real Life Policy BAD!
Review: Gregory Benford has seen the future the might have been here in THE MARTIAN RACE, while our bureaucratic untanglable regulatory (...) has strangled the spirit of free enterprise in space. The very premise of Beneford's work is a competition between factions, capatalistic classic , to see who can mount a mission to Mars. Money, FREE FLOWING money and resouorces are the key to Beneford's mission. All the wonderful storylines and the characters -(well and truely developed)-enthrall the reader, but there is the nagging "what might be" if Microsoft, Nike, Coca-Cola and others were allowed to just buy an advertisment on the mission vehicles, the astronauts suits, even a small insert in the active mission screen. I loved this story. You should read and enjoy the content for what it is. Gregory Benford made me think about the hamstrung space program while entertaining royally. This one volume is a better Mars short-take than The Red Planet , Green Planet , and Blue Planet Books. But if you doubt me on the real facts about NASA and the strangling of free enterprise in the program ask them. It'll make you mad.Where could we be with those billions of advertising dollars? Walking on the Moon, Mars...?

Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: I am not going to go into deep detail on the book or why you should get it or examine the details of the characters and what happens. Let me just tell you, if you have any interest on humans getting to Mars and living there you MUST read this book. Not only is the Science on the spot, but also the reality of it all. This is one of the best Sci Fi Books I've read in a long while. It's just a book you can't put down.

Rating:
Summary: A little too 'alienated'
Review: I don't normally read sci fi, so maybe that played a big part in why I wasn't totally thrilled with the story. It's a fairly realistic depiction of the near future, with an interesting topic. I thought the author got a little too technical in places, and my interest wavered there. Also, his characters didn't seem exactly three dimensional. The four astronauts felt like strangers to me throughout the story. The tension between the competing astronauts, and their sponsors was very fascinating, though. I also liked the description of the landscape--very vivid and eloquent. The various mishaps were not dramatic like in most sci-fi movies, but still interesting enough to keep me engrossed. The way the characters acted in the end when faced with an urgent situation threw me off though. I thought it was pretty thoughtless of them to take so long to do what they did, and when the worst occured, they all acted like they couldn't have cared less. I'm sure it's typical of astronauts to stay cool and calm in even the most terrifying of situations, but I didn't think that they were emotionless robots, totally without empathy. I realize this is what they call 'hard' sci fi, and if you like those kinds of books, you'll probably enjoy this novel. If not, you find it a little too distant, and lacking heart.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and entertaining
Review: I found this to be an excellent book.It had good character development, a firm plot and the story was interesting. A better ending would have earned it a five star, but it is one of those books that you pick up a year later and read again.

Rating:
Summary: One Of The Best Of 1999.
Review: I have a yearning to see mankind walk and live on the sands of Mars within the next 15 to 20 years. But until poor Nasa gets decent funding or Private Industry gets off it's vision-poor behind, then this excellent novel is the best we're going to get for at least 15 years. Greg Benford has created what I believe to be, if not his best novel, then at least his most important one. Reading this story, one cannot help but be moved by the sheer realism of the vision within it. As portrayed, putting people on Mars wont be easy, but it certainly is possible, as Bob Zubrin and several others have tirelessly asserted. Benford gives us strong and believable characters portraying all the best, and sometimes the worst of human qualities. And the technology that takes his Private Industry team there shows both ingenuity and fragility. And if someone like Bill Gates became passionate about taking Mankind to the heavens for good, then the instigator of the the Mars project within 'The Martian Race' becomes more believable all the time. Buy this epic novel and you wont regret getting it instead of some space-opera confectionary.

Rating:
Summary: Racing to Mars with a great deal of verve...
Review: I have never read Gregory Benford before, and picked up "The Martian Race" from a bargain-bin pile with a little interest. It strayed to my "to be read" pile, then finally worked its way to the surface.

I am a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy, and I found "The Martian Race" another strong extrapolation of potential future visits to our brother planet. The team of four sent to Mars - intelligently told through the eyes of the team biologist and the only female of the group - are there not from NASA, not from science, but from the most basic of societal drives: Corporate Sponsorship and Prize Money.

30 Billion to the first team to reach Mars, fulfill a series of scientific requirements, and return. The conflict of the story is multi-levelled: the arrival of a second team trying to beat the first to the prize, the "mere survival" conflict of four humans trying to survive on Mars, and then a further twist that I don't want to ruin by mentioning.

All in all, "The Martian Race" was an enjoyable reading experience, with enough "real science" to feel entirely plausible. The plot curves catch you unaware, but don't feel overly contrived, and the fantastical element that becomes the third conflict is wonderfully crafted.

The only real frustrations I had with the book were, as another reviewer mentioned, a rather weak ending, and a few occasions where I felt a few characters suddenly acted out of character for what we'd seen of them so far. Regardless, you won't be let down with "The Martian Race," especially if you enjoyed Robinson's "Mars" trilogy.

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: Racing to Mars with a great deal of verve...
Review: I have never read Gregory Benford before, and picked up "The Martian Race" from a bargain-bin pile with a little interest. It strayed to my "to be read" pile, then finally worked its way to the surface.

I am a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy, and I found "The Martian Race" another strong extrapolation of potential future visits to our brother planet. The team of four sent to Mars - intelligently told through the eyes of the team biologist and the only female of the group - are there not from NASA, not from science, but from the most basic of societal drives: Corporate Sponsorship and Prize Money.

30 Billion to the first team to reach Mars, fulfill a series of scientific requirements, and return. The conflict of the story is multi-levelled: the arrival of a second team trying to beat the first to the prize, the "mere survival" conflict of four humans trying to survive on Mars, and then a further twist that I don't want to ruin by mentioning.

All in all, "The Martian Race" was an enjoyable reading experience, with enough "real science" to feel entirely plausible. The plot curves catch you unaware, but don't feel overly contrived, and the fantastical element that becomes the third conflict is wonderfully crafted.

The only real frustrations I had with the book were, as another reviewer mentioned, a rather weak ending, and a few occasions where I felt a few characters suddenly acted out of character for what we'd seen of them so far. Regardless, you won't be let down with "The Martian Race," especially if you enjoyed Robinson's "Mars" trilogy.

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: Racing to Mars with a great deal of verve...
Review: I have never read Gregory Benford before, and picked up "The Martian Race" from a bargain-bin pile with a little interest. It strayed to my "to be read" pile, then finally worked its way to the surface.

I am a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy, and I found "The Martian Race" another strong extrapolation of potential future visits to our brother planet. The team of four sent to Mars - intelligently told through the eyes of the team biologist and the only female of the group - are there not from NASA, not from science, but from the most basic of societal drives: Corporate Sponsorship and Prize Money.

30 Billion to the first team to reach Mars, fulfill a series of scientific requirements, and return. The conflict of the story is multi-levelled: the arrival of a second team trying to beat the first to the prize, the "mere survival" conflict of four humans trying to survive on Mars, and then a further twist that I don't want to ruin by mentioning.

All in all, "The Martian Race" was an enjoyable reading experience, with enough "real science" to feel entirely plausible. The plot curves catch you unaware, but don't feel overly contrived, and the fantastical element that becomes the third conflict is wonderfully crafted.

The only real frustrations I had with the book were, as another reviewer mentioned, a rather weak ending, and a few occasions where I felt a few characters suddenly acted out of character for what we'd seen of them so far. Regardless, you won't be let down with "The Martian Race," especially if you enjoyed Robinson's "Mars" trilogy.

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: Better than Bova!
Review: I have read Ben Bova's two Martian novels, MARS, and RETURN TO MARS, and I thought this novel was better, although Bova's novels are very good in their own right. Benford's novel is much more plausible in that the Mars missions he depicts are bare minimum in terms of hardware, number of astronauts, redundancy, etc., probably how we will go to Mars someday in real life. Benford goes into great detail to describe the science necessary to understand the technology, and Mars itself, without being drawn out and dull, too much science is a turn-off to some people. In this novel there is a lot of action and suspense, it kept my interest throughout and was a fun read. It has a very interesting ending, almost poetic, very well done, and leaves room for a sequel, one I for sure would read.

Rating:
Summary: Science fiction - with a message
Review: I loved this book. It blends scifi with a practical idea: Why not let the private sector do what the public sector can't afford or won't afford? Nice mix of possibilities of life on the red planet with what the human experience there would be like. A great read.