Moving Mars

Rating:
Summary: But where are you going to put it?
Review: Heh, small joke. Sorry. I've seen this book for years, but always held off on buying it, seeing it as just another of those Mars books that seem to crop up every few years. Yeah, I like the idea of colonizing or visiting our red neighbor but that doesn't mean I have to read every book that someone decides to write about it. But I finally got around to it, since it seemed different enough from such works as Kim Stanley Robinson's great trilogy and just finished reading it and, well, I was wrong. This is a great book, full of ideas and interesting characters that you can sympathize with, if not relate to (in a sense) and while it doesn't rank with the famed Mars trilogy (Bear's writing just isn't as poetic or piercing as Robinson's), Bear gets major credit for crafting such an epic, wide ranging piece and managing to contain it all in one book. What's it all about though? Indeed, it's about Mars, and how Earth is trying to keep the poor colonists under the heel of their boots, and since Mars is mostly divided up into factions of different families, Earth doesn't need to do all that much to keep the status quo going. Then comes the student revolts, which really don't amount to all that much in the end, except that they introduce the two most important characters in the book, Cassie and Charles, who will go on to change Mars. People sometimes complain that the first hundred or so pages of the book devoted to the revolts aren't really that important to the main story, and they aren't. But that isn't the point, it's there to lay down the foundations of the characters and without that foundation it becomes that much harder to fathom where they are at the end. Suspense and political intrigue run rampant throughout the book, with everyone making plans against everyone else and when Charles and company discover an entirely new technology, well, then, things start getting rough. There's no turning back for the Martians at that point and if you thought that the title of the book was just mere hyperbole, well you ain't see nothing yet. The last hundred pages or so are classic SF thriller stuff, racing along so fast that you have to almost stop and catch your breath. Typical of Bear, the science is well thought out but grasping it might require some high level physics (but then not all of the characters seem to understand it that well so don't feel ashamed), don't worry, just let go and race along for the ride. Good memorable stuff, the kind of the quality the genre could sometimes use more often.

Rating:
Summary: Sci-fi is just about all I read and this was one of the best
Review: I just got through reading this book, one of the few that I have time to read each year. I totally enjoy the way Bear puts together a story, interweaivng the destinies of individuals in the ecololgical, political, and demographic tapestry that becomes the plot. I felt myself sympathising with Casseia Majumdar as she followed a group of protesters into taking action against an unwanted government ( I found it a bit irnoic that she would one day become the leader of the very kind of goverment that she was opposed to in her earlier and naive youth). It turns out that this was not the book that I thought it was when I began to read it (the sequel to The Forge of God) However, I am very glad that I got it wrong and had the opportunity of reading this one. I really hadn't expected them to use the "tweak" to move them as far as they did, just far enough to warm Mars up and wake up the atmosphere was all I'd hoped for. WOW! what and ending and a powerful statement to Man's primative nature and how high we aspire to evolve; that in doing so we must leave the very cradle of our existance and strike out on our own.

Rating:
Summary: Complex, realistic - an excellent read!
Review: I was frankly surprised by a lot of the reviews of this book. Shallow characterizations? This book follows the leads throughout a goodly chunk of their lives ... so that we learn first-hand what makes them do what they do! I've read one opinion that the prime character Casseia is too juvenile and directionless at the beginning. That's because she IS juvenile at the beginning - a teenager in college just beginning to look for a direction in her life. The book is a chronicle of a life growing up, and of Mars growing up around her. The parallel is there if you just look for it.

A warning: this is NOT a book for someone wanting to be lead by the hand. If you're into simple, straightforward, comic-book plots, Bear is going to leave you cold and confused. This is complex, intricate SF at its best. You have to think about it. Dive into it. Be swallowed by this new and different world and learn its rules. That's what Bear is best at, as he's shown in Eon, Eternity, Queen of Angels and /Slant. The science and engineering is plausible, the politics all-too-realistic and the humans are very full of human nature, even in this advanced society. The cohesiveness and depth of this depiction of future human culture in the "Triple" is amazing; again as were Bear's world of Eon/Eternity.

I found Red Mars by Robinsion simple, predictable and technically unbelievable by comparison. Moving Mars is now in my permanant, never-give-it-to-the-used-book-store collection. Eventually I'll end up buying it again because I'm sure to wear this copy out.

BTW, many don't know it (I just discovered this myself), but "Heads," a very short book Bear wrote back in '91 is actually the genesis of both Moving Mars and the Queen of Angels, /Slant pair. Not exactly a prequel, but a lot of ideas for the later books started there. Interesting to see how those lines developed out of that little, obscure book.

Rating:
Summary: The title means more than you might think . . .
Review: John Adams

Along with Eon and Eternity, this is the best Greg Bear. I couldn't put it down - got through it in 3 days. It starts with a fairly typical rebellion - Mars wants freedom from Earth domination. The main character gets caught up in things and is sent as an embassador to Earth. Meanwhile, she has a friend who, later on, turns out to be very important to the plot's conclusion. The book got better during the trip to Earth - I LOVED New York! Then, toward the end, it became apparrent the title of the book was more than just some symbolic barb. "They're REALLY going to do that?" is what I thought.

More than any other hard sci-fi I've read, Bear in this book makes the characters seem real - the main character is not just some cold, analytic scientist-type: She is astounded by the Earthlings and their individuality, yet she herself often seems almost like a teenager among all this - an Alice in Wonderland (at least that's how I felt!) The space age Valley Girl on the way to Earth was probably the best! OF COURSE in the future there will be superficial, immature, air-headed, materialistic young women!

Rating:
Summary: best read in years
Review: Moving Mars

Probably the best Science Fiction books I have read in years. Bear's fully imagined universe (not so, so, distant future) is simply amazing. He explains without getting lost in detail or glossing over key stuff. His New York of the future is a book in itself, never mind the complete and functional Mars he imagines. No puffy "terra forming" cop out for him, but realistic, hard scrabble living.

Key is his imagining of the future of nano technology, already being worked on in labs today, Bear puts his own spin on it. Fascinating stuff even if we are probably centuries away from the reality. Less clear are his "educational bacteria and virus" but that's ok.

The plot it not bad. It involves politics, but it is no Dune in those terms. I would guess that the political plot points are there to move the story along. The characters are all believable (even the bad guys have some dimension to them). The love life of the main folks seems a little thin, but hey, no room for everything!

One major problem I had was with the crucial plot point. Without giving too much away, to do what was done, even the first time, would in my mind create tremendous reactions on earth and mars. Neat idea but it strains credibility.

Still, a great read, lots of fun and well imagined.

Rating:
Summary: Martian Revolution
Review: This is quite a long book for a first-person narrative. Bear's other novels of comparable length feature half a dozen characters, but here we have only one - Casseia Majumdar, Martian citizen, college student, ambassador to Earth, and Martian political hero. The central conflict, though it takes a while to get burning, is the Martian colonies' fight for independence from Earth.
But this isn't a violent book. For the most part it's a political struggle, and Bear does an excellent job of breathing life into a potentially slow-moving and drab story. His science, as always, is impeccable, from the terraforming process of Mars, to the genetically modified humans who Casseia meets on Earth.
It is a little slow in places (the scientific info dumps are a bit more ponderous than in others by Greg Bear), and for a while the story seems to lose its way, but this is compensated for by the general smoothness of Bear's writing, and the depth of his narrator's voice. Greg Bear is one of only a few science-fiction writers who knows how to create real, believable characters to match the science of his books.
He also manages to drag you into the story, once the tension really starts mounting. By the end, I was screaming at the injustices perpetrated by the imperialistic Earth government.