From /tmp/sf.3694 Sun Nov 8 23:06:49 1992 Path: isy!liuida!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: schmunk@vega.rice.edu (Robert Schmunk) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Re-submit of missing review (just in case) Message-ID: <1991Dec23.195534.6105@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 23 Dec 91 19:55:34 GMT Sender: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Reply-To: schmunk@vega.rice.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Pacific * Bell Lines: 133 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com MARTIAN RAINBOW By Robert L. Forward A book review by R.B. Schmunk (Copyright 1991) MARTIAN RAINBOW is a new hard sf novel by Robert L. Forward, author of such books as DRAGON'S EGG and ROCHEWORLD. Like many books given the 'hard sf' label, it is long on ideas and a bit short on plot and characterization. In this case, the problem would seem to be that Forward has packed in too many ideas for a single novel and not left himself room for the other components. This isn't surprising, as Forward is a working scientist who has either worked on some of the topics which arise in the course of MARTIAN RAINBOW or who has read extensively about them. Among the issues presented are the future of warfare and the accompanying technology (especially in a vacuum environment), advances in electronic surveillance, Martian geology and climatology, and terraforming. All were reasonably presented, and I don't recall noticing any inaccuracies in the material with which I am very familiar: Martian climatology. (I should note that Forward includes a short bibilography. Some of the papers cited are a bit dated, but they're still valid.) The book begins with the conquest of Mars (c. 2040) by a United Nations expeditionary force, composed mostly of US forces and commanded by American General Alexander Armstrong. In some unexplained (and it should have been) fashion, Mars has been taken over by Russian Neo-Communists, with whom the US is also fighting over the Baltic republics. The invasion is quickly over, with only a handful of deaths, and General Armstrong returns to Earth in triumph, bringing back all the Russians identified as KGB agents, which is most of them. Left behind on Mars as military governor is the general's twin brother, Augustus Armstrong, who can only be differentiated from his brother by a couple of missing fingers, lost in an auto accident in which Alexander was driving. He soon declares the end of martial law and moves into a position as head of the Sagan Mars Institute, a research organization, and lets someone else become the elected governor of Mars, now a UN territory administered under US law. It is soon apparent that the brothers differ in more than the number of their fingers. In very broad strokes, Alexander is painted as a hot-headed megalomaniac, a super-MacArthur, who *very* publicly retires from the military in a tiff over a promotion. He immediately hooks up with a billionaire who is the secret power behind the Unified church, which seems to be an amalgamation of Moon's Unification Church and of the Scientologists. Quicker than you say "What?", Alexander is presented to a believing public as God, the Infinite Lord, and from there he moves on the US presidency. Meanwhile, back on Mars, Gus is just your average working-class science institute director, accompanying researchers on a tour of Olympus Mons. The trip is broken short when he departs to find out just what was going on at the north polar icecap back during the invasion, and it is revealed that the body of some sort of Martian/alien being has been discovered buried in the ice. From this point the book would seem to have any number of possible directions. Will Alexander's drive for power succeed? Given their differing personalitites, will some sort of conflict occur between the brothers? Will the conflict escalate to warfare between the planets? Where did the frozen alien come from, and how long has it been there? Are there more? The unfortunate thing is that the book tries to cover all of these possibilities, and some new issues that arise later in the book. All of them are interesting. Potentially each would make an intriguing novel in its own right. Instead, we are overwhelmed and some of the threads suffer when they are cut short by Forward's next good idea. As I noted above, the other problem with MARTIAN RAINBOW lies in the characterization. I have had trouble with Forward's characters before and was unable to finish reading FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONFLY (re-named ROCHEWORLD) because of it. The people in MARTIAN RAINBOW are an improvement, but Forward still has a way to go. Alexander Armstrong is portrayed as a psychotic genius, but other than a comment that he is still compensating for being born a minute later than Gus, only the effect of his psychosis is shown. Other than the invasion of Mars, is he merited in having such a high opinion of himself? And why is he so intolerant of underlings who show signs of thinking on their own? On the other hand, Gus is seen as a admirable, hard-working scientist. He works well with others, and his relationships with women are based on love and/ or mutual repect rather than satisfying his needs. However, this description is still a bit shallow. I never had a grasp on Gus' thought processes either, particularly as little is shown of his life outside of work. Worst of all, two days after reading the book, I cannot recall if it was once mentioned what field of science was his specialty. And in the end, I could not see Forward's point in making these two men identical twin brothers. The idea of twin brothers with radically different personalities would suggest that the book would be a series of minor conflicts between the two, leading up to a battle which settles things once and for all, but this is not the case. The brothers are on two different planets, with minimal contact between them, and the book certainly does not end in a resolution of their differences. Alternatively, perhaps it is important that some mistake be made in distinguishing between the two. Such a scene does indeed occur, but by the time it happens, its importance had been diminished (in my eyes) by all the other sub-plots which have been introduced. Given all that was going on, Forward could have made the two men un-identical, perhaps not even brothers, and still have easily found a way to resolve things. This feature of MARTIAN RAINBOW would seem to be a hook which doesn't hold. There are, of course, other characters in the book, described with varying degrees of success. There is Gus' lover Tanya, a geologist studying Olympus Mons; Chris Stoker (an amalgam of Chris McKay and Carol Stoker, planetary scientists mentioned in the bibliography? I wonder), the fun-loving governor of Mars; Robert Krapp, the money-man who financed Alexander's rise to power; Jerry, the programmer in charge of the Mace of God; etc.; etc. Given their subsidiary roles, I had little problem with their portrayals, except that I was a bit uncomfortable with the women. Of the three women who play any noticeable part of the story, two are seen using sex as a weapon (for either good or bad). Perhaps three women is a very poor data sample to work with, but this still makes me uncomfortable. Given what I have had to say in these last few paragraphs, you would probably expect me to weigh in with a recommendation to not read this book. Surprise! Despite the massive problems I had with MARTIAN RAINBOW, I still found much of the book fascinating. I'm not suggesting that you run out and buy the hardback, but if you happen to run across a copy at the library or on a friend's bookshelf, give it a whirl. In particular, those of you who have an interest in the planet Mars may be as enthralled as I was during certain chapters. %T MARTIAN RAINBOW %A Robert L. Forward %I Ballantine Del Rey %C New York %O hardback, US$18.00 %P 319 + 14 pp. %D June 1991 %G ISBN 0-345-34712-9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Robert B. Schmunk SPAC, Rice Univ, Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251 -- (713) 527-4939 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ...give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed. --Anne Rice, THE WITCHING HOUR From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:49:37 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news.utdallas.edu!rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com!aur.alcatel.com!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: Humphrey Aaron V Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrograde Reviews--Robert L. Forward:Starquake Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 16:46:25 GMT Organization: not specified Lines: 68 Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <94Mar13.203506-0700.138935@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: aursag.aur.alcatel.com [Spoilers for _Starquake_ and _Dragon's Egg_ herein--read with caution] First off, this is a sequel to _Dragon's Egg_, which I believe was Forward's first novel. I'll try to cover that in here as well, even though it's a few years since I read it... Robert L. Forward is a respected Ph.D. physicist who has done a number of papers speculating on physics near neutron stars, black holes, and such places where physics as we know it is strained to the limit. A lot of his stuff is extremely speculative, so it's only natural that he move into SF. Prose is not his main strength, though. His characters are extremely wooden, especially his humans. His aliens are a lot better. In _Dragon's Egg_, IIRC, a neutron star was detected entering the vicinity of the solar system. A scientific expedition was sent out to investigate it. (This is a few centuries in the future, btw.) Unbeknownst to them, life exists on the star. It is life on an incredibly small scale, both in time and in space(one "day", or rotation of the neutron star, is a fifth of a second), but the ecosystem isn't conducive to swift evolution. The arrival of the humans changes that, however... In brief, during the first day of the humans' presence near the star, a race called the cheela evolve, attain sentience, and develop civilization, in response to the humans' presence in their sky and some of their laser scanning probes. The cheela tend to be more interesting characters than the humans, if only due to their alienness; the swiftness of their development, in human terms, allows for a fairly epic scope. The humans get short shrift because a conversation between humans takes as long as several years on the neutron star, and they soon become fairly minor characters... By the end of _Dragon's Egg_, the cheela have developed a spacefaring technology, and have sent off probes to explore other neutron stars... _Starquake_ centers around two major crises. The first occurs when the human ship is damaged, and the cheela have to act fast(only a few years, on their scale)to repair the damage before the humans are ripped apart by tidal forces. Then the quake of the title happens. Suddenly there are only four cheela left alive on the surface of the star--and quite a few more than that left in orbit, with no means of descending. They have to find some means of returning to the star, and dealing with the barbarian hordes that have sprung up in the intervening generations... Like I said, Forward isn't the most gripping writer, but the story of the cheela is sufficiently interesting to overcome a lot of that drawback, IMHO. Someone more interested in tech stuff would be absorbed by that, too--I skimmed the few sections of that that came up. I'd give it a 6.5/10, a bit more if you're a real Hard SF fan. %A Forward, Robert L. %T Starquake %I Ballantine del Rey %C New York %D October 1985 %G ISBN 0-45-31233-3 %P 339 pp. %S Cheela %V Book 2 %O Paperback, $5.50 US -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--The Waterboys:Dream Harder Current Read--Mike Resnick:Purgatory "curious george swung down the gorge/the ants took him apart" --billbill From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Sep 9 16:58:02 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!eru.mt.luth.se!news.algonet.se!eua.ericsson.se!cnn.exu.ericsson.se!newshost.convex.com!bcm.tmc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Subject: Review: "Camelot 30K" by Robert L Forward Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= p-m agapow Lines: 71 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 14:18:10 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 71 "Camelot 30K" by Robert L Forward A Postview, copyright 1996 p-m agapow On the outer fringes of the solar system, where temperatures hover just above absolute zero, intelligent life has been discovered on a remote planetoid. A small team of humans been sent to investigate grapples with the mystery of how this minute and primitive race, the kerack, could exist in the radiation soaked, freezing environment. Robert Forward has a very distinctive MO. If you were to read any two of his books you'd recognise them as being the product of the same author. Regrettably this isn't an entirely good thing. One of Forward's trademarks is the depiction of detailed and intriguing alien races, side by side with flat and implausible humans. And in this way "Camelot 30K" is a bit of a departure for him. In this book, the aliens are also implausible. There looms an obvious plot development which will have most right-minded readers white-knuckled with terror. (Big clue: the humans explore the alien city of "Camalor" with the help of the wizard "Merlene" and encounter the warrior "Mordet". Now think of the title of the book. Scary, huh?) Fortunately this analogy isn't fully developed, but underneath it all is the fact that the alien society is a thin analog of the human middle ages. (There are professional male warriors on chargers tended to by pages, serving the Queen and princesses. There are wars with neighbouring city-states. There are males as farmers, females as homemakers and artisans.) In addition the aliens language is littered with self-references in the third person, a base 5 number system, "be"s and "o'"s. For example: "Merlene be the fi'fifth female child of Patene ... Patene be hoping that her five times five child would be special - and she be! How proud Patene be when Merlene be made the Wizard o'Camalor!" 300 pages of this pseudo-Latinate is bad enough, but consider that human- alien speech is achieved through realtime computer translation, which works transparently except for being unable to substitute "of" for "o'," base 10 for base 5, and conjugate the verb "to be." As said above, Forward's human characterisation has never been good and this fact is highlighted by the failure of the aliens. Our human crew is drawn from all different nations, so they periodically drop in a few words of their mother tongue and reminisce about home to remind you of this. This device is even less effective than when used by the allegedly french Picard on "ST:TNG." The dialogue is painfully geeky: "This must be the beast of burden Merlene described earlier - the hueller," said Selke. "Built like a caterpillar, but with four sets of legs, two on top and two on the bottom." "That baby is big - even by Earth caterpillar standards!" Rob said, impressed. "Must be a whole eight centimeters high. Tall as a kerack - and some twenty-four centimeters long." It's like being trapped at party full of drunk physics undergraduates, only less emancipating. There is a fairly cool form of space travel used, but that occurs largely in the prologue. A disappointing effort for Forward - maybe he can write out the humans entirely next time? [*/misfire] and public service announcements on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Robert L. Forward %B Camelot 30K %I Questar %C New York, USA %D 1988 %G ISBN 0-445-20531-8 %P 454pp %O paperback, Aus$10.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]