Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A credible space survival yarn, 24 Nov 2002
So, what would you do as the commander of the third manned Mars mission who's discovered, after a back-slappingly successful landing, your ride home is busted and Earth can't send a rescue cab? Wow, talk about the potential for a nasty mood swing!In MARS CROSSING, this is the dodgy predicament facing John Radkowski and his crew of five (Ryan, Tana, Estrella, Chamlong, and Trevor) in 2028. Their return vehicle, previously landed on Mars to robotically manufacture fuel from the planet's atmosphere for the trip back, didn't function as its instruments indicated. As a matter of fact, it's now just so much scrap metal. The only solution is to travel 4,000 miles to the polar cap and the landing site of the first Mars mission - Brazilian no less! - in 2020 whose crew mysteriously died on the surface. Their return vehicle is presumably still intact and ready to go. Trouble is, it only has room for two pilgrims. I rarely read space sci-fi because the plots, ETs and technology are so exorbitantly far-fetched. I suspect life will be less fanciful, even in the far future. However, in MARS CROSSING, author Geoffrey Landis, a working NASA scientist, has crafted a solid tale around plausible new technology and the planetary knowledge gained from the Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor projects, both of which he was a part. Even the low key villains of the piece, for example the itchy life form that doomed the second Mars manned mission in 2022, are relatively mundane. (At least it wasn't Tinea cruris!) I especially liked some aspects of the mission's technology, such as the Spectra 10 super-fiber rope, almost as thin as a spider's web, which can hold thousands of pounds, and the super-light Butterfly airplane. Pretty neat stuff! I did find the composition of the crew slightly improbable. Estrella was the wife of the long-dead Brazilian mission commander. And Trevor's only reason for being there - talk about Dead Weight - was that he won the $1000 per ticket lottery that helped finance the cost of the expedition. Now, really! However, once I got over that credibility hiccup, I enjoyed this book very much and, since it is the author's first novel, much credit is due.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing on the whole; wait for the paperback, 12 May 2001
If you're looking for a true feel of Mars, you're better off reading the introductory sections of "Red Mars". Landis' planet left me with only a very superficial impression, and for this reader, lacks any real feel of adventure or wonder; perhaps this is his aim, as he is concentrating on the human characters, but these too are pallid and largely uninteresting. The pace of the plot suffers from interpolated biographical flashbacks, which on occasion have something of interest, but largely get in the way, and although he tries to add depth to his characters, I found none of them sufficiently compelling to care what happened to them. Landis does help us out here, by getting rid of a few of them during the narrative, but I only felt any sort of slight involvement with one of the victims. This is a lightweight read, enjoyable enough, but suffering from too many coincidental events, and unlikely bootstrappings. Fortunately, it is so structured that you can miss out quite a bit if you dislike the biographies. Don't expect it to surprise or inform you if you are already a Mars buff. I don't know if Arthur C Clarke read the same book as I did, but I would advise you to be wary of the blurbs. "Epic" this isn't.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Standard Mars Adventure, 22 Jan 2006
Landis can be – as one might guess from reading this book – justifiably credited with the title of Mars Expert since he works for the NASA John Glenn Research Centre, has had 150 scientific papers published and carries far more outer space credentials than anyone would have thought necessary.
There is therefore a taste of authenticity in the scientific and hardware aspects.
The novel tells the story of the third Mars Mission, a US-led venture which follows the initial Brazilian landing at the North Pole (where the astronauts mysteriously died) and the second American mission which also ended tragically and ironically when Athlete’s Foot began to infest not only the crew but the machinery.
Now four men and two women (one of them the wife of one of the dead Brazilian astronauts) have reached Mars safely, only to discover that their return craft – which should have been manufacturing fuel and oxygen for the return trip – has been compromised by the Martian environment and is useless.
Their only hope is to travel across Mars to the North Pole where the Brazilian ship might still be capable of getting them back. The only flaw in this plan is that the Jesus Du Sol’ is only large enough to take two of them home.
Comparisons have to be made with Ben Bova’s 1992 ‘Mars’, particularly in terms of structure. the narrative, like Bova’s, is interspersed with events from the pre-Mars lives of the crew.
Although this device is a useful way of putting flesh on the bones of a character, it can be over-used, and here it would I think have been better to have the crew learn of each others’ ‘secrets from the past’ through discovery or conversation. The Mars journey is real, exciting and compelling, while the past life dossiers are a little dull.
Landis’ Mars is a far more real place than Bova’s. This Mars is beautiful, cold, deadly and holds hidden surprises, like the fluorescing rocks which appear to glow for a few minutes after sunset, obviously something which Landis researched or studied, and for which he gives a rational explanation. It is also made clear that the gravity and atmospheric differences have consequences and side-effects (both positive and negative) that laymen – and some other novelists – would not consider.
Landis demonstrates – at least on paper – that it is possible to fly an aeroplane on Mars, although the construction and fuel considerations have to be vastly different.
If one asks ‘What is this novel a platform for?’ one can only say that it is demonstrating the capacity within individuals (and therefore with Humanity) to not only rise from the gutter and reach for the stars but to struggle on against the odds to survive. It’s an old theme and although Landis has created an informative, exciting and entertaining thriller, exploring this theme, he brings nothing new in the way of illumination.
It’s a solid and workmanlike piece but one can’t help feeling that something is missing, that Landis, like Bova, fails to capture the atmosphere of the vast sterile wasteland.
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by Ben Bova
by Jack McDevitt
