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books2010-09-14 04:21 pm
angel_negra) wrote in books2010-09-14 04:21 pm
Entry tags:
Book Rec: Stowaway to Mars
The Book: Stowaway to Mars
The Author: John Wyndham
The Rec:
This a very fun book if you need some light reading. The book is an old one, from back in the 50s era of scifi. The plot follows a team of British men who are attempting to fly a spaceship to Mars and back. The stowaway from the title is the daughter of a scientist; both her and her father had found a Martian robot, only to have it destroy itself before they could show others, which led to them being painted as frauds. The daughter, Joan, sneaks onto the British rocket in an attempt to prove life on Mars and clear her and her father's names.
The science in this book is rather fun, from a nostalgic point of view. A lot of it comes off as what could have been extrapolated as the future of technology based on the advances in the 50s. The rocket designs are very much those old cone designs with fins. Mars is shown to have an atmosphere and vegetation - though I did like that the author didn't make it a perfect copy of Earth's atmosphere, as the team of protagonists needed oxygen masks. The author also tries to work with the idea of artificial intelligence, which was neat to see.
There are some slow parts to the book, though the author does use these times to address some of his ideas.. The author has two main ideas that he addresses through the plot. One is the idea that humanity has rushed it's technological revolution too quickly, tampering with machines before they, as a species, was ready for it. The other main theme was the idea of artificial life, which, based on how the author works it in, seemed to be a relatively new idea to scifi at this point.
The story takes us from the creation of the rocket, to the long trip to Mars, and to the discovery of life on Mars and brief epilogue back on Earth. The lead up to take off moved pretty quickly, and the author uses it to not only foreshadow competition for the race to Mars, but to set up his idea of humanity not being ready for serious dependancy on machines. A lot of this is played through the wife of the lead protagonist, as she's manifested a lot of resentment for her husband loving machines more than her and their unborn child. I admit, I was kind of on her side in this, though I felt that the author did a good job of showing both her side and her husband's in this.
Which leads me to the voyage to Mars. There was a good section of the book that was simply them sitting on the rocket, travelling to Mars, and the author makes a good use of this time to develop the protagonist team. He also uses the time to talk out the ideas of machine dependency and artificial intelligence via his characters. I actually liked this section, because it didn't feel like the author was shoe-horning his views into the plot. More that, he brought up the ideas and let the characters talk them out. Not everyone agreed, different views were brought up and no one side "won".
Once the crew gets to Mars, the story picks up again, and I really liked the Martian robots. The author did a good job of creating a fun little alien society. Joan does get separated from the rest of the team and meets the Martians. She does get saddled with the whole romance with an alien plot, which made me roll my eyes, but I did like that she was the one who got to see the alien society and have the real fun part of the adventure.
The men on the team were left to deal with rogue alien robots and got to meet their rocket competitors, the Russians. What was a pleasant surprise for me was that despite the protagonists dislike of this team, the Russians weren't played as the bad guys. They got to make some interesting and valid points about socialism vs the idea of 'he who lands on the planet can claim it for their country'. We also get a brief glimpse of the American team, and I won't spoil it for you, simply that this was the scene that really drove home that this was a British author and not an American author. I laughed hard.
I will warn that Joan has to deal with a few attempted rapes. Nothing graphic, nor was it played up for dramatics. I was originally prepared to roll my eyes, but I was surprised at how the author handled the attempts. Except for her romance plot, Joan isn't played off as a the typical 'tough chick' or 'weak woman' that you see in a lot of scifi now a days. She dealt with a lot of things far better than I was expecting, and her opinions/intelligence/feelings were given an equal weight to the men by the author.
I found that a lot with this story. Things like the Russians showing up, or Joan bringing up her opinions on machines, are things that I'm used to being treated far more one note by a lot of sci fi. Like, I was expecting the Russians to be flat bad guy characters, and I was expecting Joan to be given the 'bad' opinion in discussions so the men could correct her and I was always getting pleasantly surprised. That said, I found that a lot of ideas the author was attempting to work through in the novel were ones that he didn't truly grasp himself, for example, his characters' arguments for artificial intelligence didn't have the same weight of belief as those of the characters who couldn't conceive of the idea. Though I think a lot of that was due to when the novel was written.
All in all, I think this is a good book. It's not heavy reading material, but if you have a couple of hours to kill, like at the laundromat or on a long trip, this book makes a great distraction. It's pretty fast paced, and even the slower parts are put to pretty good use.
The Author: John Wyndham
The Rec:
This a very fun book if you need some light reading. The book is an old one, from back in the 50s era of scifi. The plot follows a team of British men who are attempting to fly a spaceship to Mars and back. The stowaway from the title is the daughter of a scientist; both her and her father had found a Martian robot, only to have it destroy itself before they could show others, which led to them being painted as frauds. The daughter, Joan, sneaks onto the British rocket in an attempt to prove life on Mars and clear her and her father's names.
The science in this book is rather fun, from a nostalgic point of view. A lot of it comes off as what could have been extrapolated as the future of technology based on the advances in the 50s. The rocket designs are very much those old cone designs with fins. Mars is shown to have an atmosphere and vegetation - though I did like that the author didn't make it a perfect copy of Earth's atmosphere, as the team of protagonists needed oxygen masks. The author also tries to work with the idea of artificial intelligence, which was neat to see.
There are some slow parts to the book, though the author does use these times to address some of his ideas.. The author has two main ideas that he addresses through the plot. One is the idea that humanity has rushed it's technological revolution too quickly, tampering with machines before they, as a species, was ready for it. The other main theme was the idea of artificial life, which, based on how the author works it in, seemed to be a relatively new idea to scifi at this point.
The story takes us from the creation of the rocket, to the long trip to Mars, and to the discovery of life on Mars and brief epilogue back on Earth. The lead up to take off moved pretty quickly, and the author uses it to not only foreshadow competition for the race to Mars, but to set up his idea of humanity not being ready for serious dependancy on machines. A lot of this is played through the wife of the lead protagonist, as she's manifested a lot of resentment for her husband loving machines more than her and their unborn child. I admit, I was kind of on her side in this, though I felt that the author did a good job of showing both her side and her husband's in this.
Which leads me to the voyage to Mars. There was a good section of the book that was simply them sitting on the rocket, travelling to Mars, and the author makes a good use of this time to develop the protagonist team. He also uses the time to talk out the ideas of machine dependency and artificial intelligence via his characters. I actually liked this section, because it didn't feel like the author was shoe-horning his views into the plot. More that, he brought up the ideas and let the characters talk them out. Not everyone agreed, different views were brought up and no one side "won".
Once the crew gets to Mars, the story picks up again, and I really liked the Martian robots. The author did a good job of creating a fun little alien society. Joan does get separated from the rest of the team and meets the Martians. She does get saddled with the whole romance with an alien plot, which made me roll my eyes, but I did like that she was the one who got to see the alien society and have the real fun part of the adventure.
The men on the team were left to deal with rogue alien robots and got to meet their rocket competitors, the Russians. What was a pleasant surprise for me was that despite the protagonists dislike of this team, the Russians weren't played as the bad guys. They got to make some interesting and valid points about socialism vs the idea of 'he who lands on the planet can claim it for their country'. We also get a brief glimpse of the American team, and I won't spoil it for you, simply that this was the scene that really drove home that this was a British author and not an American author. I laughed hard.
I will warn that Joan has to deal with a few attempted rapes. Nothing graphic, nor was it played up for dramatics. I was originally prepared to roll my eyes, but I was surprised at how the author handled the attempts. Except for her romance plot, Joan isn't played off as a the typical 'tough chick' or 'weak woman' that you see in a lot of scifi now a days. She dealt with a lot of things far better than I was expecting, and her opinions/intelligence/feelings were given an equal weight to the men by the author.
I found that a lot with this story. Things like the Russians showing up, or Joan bringing up her opinions on machines, are things that I'm used to being treated far more one note by a lot of sci fi. Like, I was expecting the Russians to be flat bad guy characters, and I was expecting Joan to be given the 'bad' opinion in discussions so the men could correct her and I was always getting pleasantly surprised. That said, I found that a lot of ideas the author was attempting to work through in the novel were ones that he didn't truly grasp himself, for example, his characters' arguments for artificial intelligence didn't have the same weight of belief as those of the characters who couldn't conceive of the idea. Though I think a lot of that was due to when the novel was written.
All in all, I think this is a good book. It's not heavy reading material, but if you have a couple of hours to kill, like at the laundromat or on a long trip, this book makes a great distraction. It's pretty fast paced, and even the slower parts are put to pretty good use.