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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
The ONLY book you'll need about Mars, 16 Dec 2001
By A Customer
I'm not going to talk about the planet Mars here, because if you're reading this then you're almost certainly already "into" Mars, you know what an amazing planet it is, and are just checking out this review because you're wondering to yourself if you should fork out for yet another Mars-related book, wondering if it has anything new to offer you, if it's different to any of the other books about Mars sitting there on your shelf... Well, let me set your mind at rest. Yes, you should write that cheque or give that credit card number; yes, it has a lot of new material and information to offer you. And yes, it is different to those other volumes gathering dust on your shelf. So different, in fact, that if you buy this new book, you can probably give most of your existing Mars library to Oxfam, because if you buy MARS then you won't need any other Mars book for quite a while. MARS basically takes a deep breath and draws a line under everything we've learned about Mars to date. Spaceprobes, telescopic observations, they're all in there. The exietence of water, past and present, on Mars is covered in great detail, as is the fascinating but hair-tearingly frustrating "Search for Life", either in-situ, by the Viking experiments, or at long range, by peering into the (in)famous "Mars Meteorite". Everyone who is anyone is inbetween the covers. Read this book and you'll see all those names on the JPL websites etc as real people, I promise you. But what makes the book special - and I don't use the word lightly - is it's tone. When you read MARS, it's like having the two accomplished authors sitting there in your front room, talking to you personally, giving you an audio-visual presentation on the Red Planet. They travelled the world to write this book, it's a labour of love, and reading it takes the reader on a journey around Earth, and then on into space, to learn about Mars. The artwork and photos used to illustrate the informal, chatty text are all first class, and even I - a rampant "Red" opposed to terraforming - have to admit that the artwork of a future "Blue Mars" is quite lovely. When I saw MARS on a shelf my first thought was "That's a big book..." Having bought it, and read it, in fact devoured it, I still think that. But it's not just big physically, it's big in terms of ambition, and emotion too. The authors love Mars, it's a real world to them. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it's taken to Mars by one of the crew members on the first expedition. Stuart Atkinson
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