Book time

For my last birthday (in October) I was given a book token by my parents in law, and it took my until a few weeks ago to manage to spend it (Amazon won’t take them so I have to actually go to the bookshops in town with some idea what I want and find it in stock!). I stocked up on a mixture of books – some by authors I’d read before, others by authors I’ve heard of but not read. The first two of these I’ve now finished – The Martian Race by Gregory Benford and Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo (edit: this book seems to have been retitled Unto Leviathan for some odd reason).

In The Martian Race, Benford brings us a classic hard SF novel of the near future. We follow the fortunes of the first astronauts to land on Mars. Initially, it all seems straightforward – almost too much so; you know that there’s something going to jump up and bite the intrepid astronauts! Indeed, complications soon pile up, in the form of competition for the Mars Prize (akin to the X Prize), surprising scientific findings, engineering problems and politics. The title of the book also takes on several meanings throughout the book – don’t think you know what the title means until near the end! All in all, quite a good book, worth reading if you’re into hard SF or the science of Mars.

Ship of Fools, by contrast, is a completely different and much darker book. Russo takes us on an exploration of the human soul as the crew of the starship Argonos visit a colony world that has been savagely attacked, but whether by humans or aliens is initially unclear. They then find an apparently derelict starship drifting in space and attempt to explore it. Mix into this political tensions between the upper-class and lower-class crew, an attempted mutiny, mysterious deaths and madness among the explorers of the derelict ship, deception, discovery, sacrifice and heroism, and you have a story with its sights set high but with its feet still on the ground. Russo is also not afraid to ask spiritual questions – the role of the church is embedded at the heart of the novel, and the relationships between power, authority, belief, devotion, love and hate are crucial to the story. An excellent book, if not always a comfortable read.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 5:12pm on 21 June 2005
Category: Books, Life, Struggling, General