Rating: 
Summary: it's no wonder we're still Earthbound
Review: "First Landing" is Mars Society founder and rocket pioneer Robert Zubrin's first work of fiction, and it shows. His characters have the depth of cardboard, the dialogue is often hilariously stilted, and the prose is riddled with cliches and irrepressible sentimentality. But I really liked this book. For its failings, it has a page-turning premise and a taut, charged plot; I read "First Landing" in two sittings and enjoyed every moment of it. Zubrin's tale of a near-future mission to Mars contains some satisfying moments (including a believably cynical portrait of Washington politics) and not a little genuine excitement. "First Landing" isn't the sleekest Mars novel to roll out of the hangar, but it tells a good story, and Zubrin's enthusiasm is infectious.
Rating:
Summary: The science may be good, but the story's a dud
Review: Author Robert Zubrin obviously has great scientific credentials. He must be brilliant. His non-fiction book, A Case for Mars, added valuable insight and understanding to the body of thought on this subject and generated kudos from the likes of Buzz Aldrin, Carl Sagan, and the revered Arthur C. Clarke.
Unfortunately, however, this novel about man's first voyage to the red planet is idiotic. It supposes that five incompatible personalities travel to Mars for a years-long mission, about which they have no clear sense of what they're supposed to accomplish. Laughably, having arrived, they can't agree on why they're there, as if NASA sent them with simply"take a look around and let us know." Even the earthbound scientists directing the mission are yet arguing about what they should be about on the martian surface. Then there's a rediculous scenario about a phony "expert" riling up the entire country with the idea that the crew, having been contaminated, shouldn't be allowed to return to earth, as if NASA hadn't considered beforehand what exposure to the martian envoirnment might entail. I gave it a good try, but halfway through the book I could suspend my disbelief no longer; NASA just couldn't be that inept. This story appears to be the result of someone saying, "You know so much about this stuff; you ought to write a novel," and our scientific and technological genius rising to his level of incompetence. So, in my opinion, this book is a waste of time. A successful science fiction novel must, I believe, not only have good, or at least feasible, science, but also believable characters and a story line that makes sense. Zubrin's characters are believable as people, I suppose, but not in this nonsensical scenario. Were Arther C. Clarke or Orson Scott Card to write a similar tale, there would surely be no suspension of disbelief problems nor confusion about who the reader would be pulling for.. Come to think of it, they already have!
Rating: 
Summary: Very realistic !
Review: I really liked the fact that the achievements of the first martians was realistic, and the technology they used to reach a point where colonization became inevitable sounded very realistic - something possible in the near future without any mega projects. I find the political drama unfolding on Earth regarding the opposition faced in bringing them back to Earth a little unrealistic. Overall the book was amazing - a little
more visualization of Mars's physical surroundings would have been nice - something Arthur C. Clarke knows very well how to achieve. But overall I think Zubrin has done an excellent job -very readably, inspiring and fast paced novel - you will finish it even before you realize it. Its not a very big novel unlike the Mars series from Kim Stanley.
Rating: 
Summary: Exciting, accurate, could not put the book down
Review: I was excited to see that the author of 'Entering Space' and 'The Case for Mars' had written a novel about the first manned mission to Mars. I was not disappointed.
I found this book to be fast-paced, exciting, and scientifically accurate. Zubrin manages to weave a complex tale of survival on Mars together with interesting characters and a plot that left me wondering 'what's next'? About the only short-coming is that the novel is too short. I literally could not put it down.
The most compelling reason to read this novel is to glimpse Zubrin's unbounded vision of humanity's limitless future, also expressed in the non-fiction 'The Case for Mars' and 'Entering Space'. Man's destiny is the stars, and we don't have to wait 100 or 1000 years as naysayers would lead us to believe (like those who would have kept our ancestors living in caves). We can reach for our destiny right now. All it takes is vision and courage.
Rating:
Summary: Dismal, boring & shameless
Review: I was pretty excited to get started reading this book after reading the reviews. I am very interested in exploration of Mars, and this book seemed to be a perfect fit for me. Unfortunately I can not say I enjoyed this first attempt at fiction by Mr. Zubrin. The plot is predictable, and shallow. The characters could have been pulled from any number of previous tombs on exploration. At one point there is even a shameless plug for one of Zubrin's non-fiction works. I found this effort to be really lacking in conviction and creatvity, a least two more complete edits were warranted, unfortunately it is the reader who suffers reading through this dribble. About the only positive point I can note is that the suffereing is short-lived, as "First Landing" is quite short, and requires very little in the way of concentration, as the reader is aware of what lurks around every next corner.
Rating:
Summary: Dismal, boring & shameless
Review: I was pretty excited to get started reading this book after reading the reviews. I am very interested in exploration of Mars, and this book seemed to be a perfect fit for me. Unfortunately I can not say I enjoyed this first attempt at fiction by Mr. Zubrin. The plot is predictable, and shallow. The characters could have been pulled from any number of previous tombs on exploration. At one point there is even a shameless plug for one of Zubrin's non-fiction works. I found this effort to be really lacking in conviction and creatvity, a least two more complete edits were warranted, unfortunately it is the reader who suffers reading through this dribble. About the only positive point I can note is that the suffereing is short-lived, as "First Landing" is quite short, and requires very little in the way of concentration, as the reader is aware of what lurks around every next corner.
Rating:
Summary: A Surprisingly Awe Inspiring Epic Set in a Possible Future
Review: One would expect that a first venture by an aerospace engineer into fiction would have a load of neat technical detail, but very little story populated by cardboard charectors. One would be right about the technical detail, but happily wrong about the story and the charectors. Bob Zubrin's First Landing is an awe inspiring epic about the first expedition to Mars, taking place just ten years in our future. He has populated his story with a strong group of all too human charectors, not the least of who are the crew of the Beagal. Driven apart by personality clashes, the members of the crew ultimately pull together to overcome disaster and hardship in a story that made me breathless several times during the reading of it. Dr. Zubrin, besides being a fine story teller, is the visionary engineer who developed the Mars Direct scheme to send humans to Mars and bring them back safely to Earth-depicted quite graphicly in the story. However one feels about a Mars program as the "next logical step" for America's space program, one cannot deny that now in fiction, as he has in countless speaches and in two highly recommended nonfiction books (The Case for Mars and Entering Space), Dr. Zubrin makes a strong case for his point of view. I cannot recommend this story enough.
Rating:
Summary: Some Interesting Twists In A First Landing Book
Review: Robert Zubrin knows what he's talking about when it comes to Mars. Any NASA/world mission to Mars in the next few decades will probably borrow heavily from Zubrin's ideas. None of this guarantees that his fiction will be excellent, but Zubrin lands this novel and brings it back to Earth despite a few glitches. The technical details of the story are excellent. The twists in the plot make this landing on Mars different enough from other Mars books to keep the reader's attention. Most of the problems with the book reside with his characters. Unfortunately, the book is populated with astronauts, ground crew, and politicians that are too cartoonish for my taste. The conflict between Luke Johnson and Dr. Sherman might happen on Earth, but they probably wouldn't get to take it to Mars. And the conflict between Gwen and Dr. Sherman should have been left out entirely; Zubrin could have had his ending without it. Ranting aside, I enjoyed reading the book and would give it 4.4 stars if I could.
Rating: 
Summary: Three for effort and scientific accuracy
Review: There is nothing in First Landing that you could not have gotten from watching the film Mission to Mars (which Zubrin helped create). The plot is boring and the characters are one dimensional. Zubrin cops out by using lots of verbalized thoughts, and it is distracting. At the end Zubrin gives us a revised version of the Turner Thesis (which he does excellently in Entering Space), but it comes out poorly. This is definitely NOT worth reading. But if he keeps trying, he'll get fiction right eventually. Give Zubrin two more books, and they'll start to get good!
Rating: 
Summary: The Science Isn't Improbable, The Story Is
Review: This first novel by Mars enthusiast, Robert Zubrin, follows hard on several much more successfully realized works by Ben Bova, Gregory Benford, Geoffrey Landis, and others. It is ironic and disappointing that one of the leading voices on behalf of Mars exploration should turn in such a half-hearted effort. What's missing here are the very minutiae that writers such as Bova and Stephen Baxter excell at detailing. Zubrin fails to make his story as much about the expedition and the planet on which it is set as it is about the people, all of whom remain mere thumbnail sketches, caricatures. That any space agency would group these five disparate souls together for the first expedition to Mars is not only unlikely, but completely improbable. Among them number Rebecca the empiricist, Gwen the religious zealot, Luke the good ole Texas boy, and so on. Didn't NASA conduct any psyche profiles before selecting this crew? And how unlikely is it that NASA would ever select historian/chronicler McGee for such a mission? Wishful thinking on Zubrin's part. NASA, furthermore, is reknowned for exercising control over virtually every detail of an expedition such as that depicted in the novel. It borders on the ludicrous then that upon arrival, the crew and Mission Control suddenly debate the priorities of the expedition: geology or biology. Like other recent novels, Mars Crossing and The Martian Race, First Landing is as much about suspense and thrills as it is about science and planetary exploration. It succeeds slightly better on this score, I think, through a series of improbable but exciting mishaps. What's missing, however, is the wonder of walking on the Martian surface, of walking on a new, unexplored world. The author hurries through the science unneccessarily, as if his audience would somehow be bored by the very things that made them, certainly me, pick up the book in the first place. I don't doubt that Zubrin has a better Mars novel in him; he needs, however, to trust his reader's enthusiasm as much as his own.
|
