Moving Mars

In a scenario based on the colonization of our neighboring planet by corporate interests, discontent on the part of the second and third generations of the original colonists lays the groundwork for a revolution destined to last for decades. 30,000 first printing.

Nebula Award winner Bear has long been known for novels of stunning scientific extrapolation and high literary quality from his early novel Blood Music to his more recent Queen of Angels . This new novel of Mars is his finest yet. Bear follows the unlikely career of Casseia Majumdar of the Majumdar Binding Multiple (a sort of cross between an extended family and a corporation) as she goes from lukewarm student activist to president of the fledgling Federal Republic of Mars. Beginning as a coming-of-age story, with Casseia encountering corruption as well as courage and determination in a student uprising, the narrative then becomes a fine, taut and realistic political novel, as Casseia travels to Earth as part of an ambassadorial retinue, and later serves as second in leader Ti Sandra's push for Martian unification. As conflict heats up between upstart Mars and Mother Earth, Bear introduces a wildly intriguing hard-science idea, and the novel spins into a tense science fiction thriller. Bear offers a fast-moving plot; realistic, appealing characters; a vividly imagined future Earth awash in "tailored microbes," nanotechnology and dirty dealing; and the most believable evocation of the workings of politics and science in any recent science fiction novel. It all adds up to a blowout of a book, perhaps the best of the recent Mars novels, and certainly one of the best sf novels of the year.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Medium-future Martian odyssey from the author of Anvil of Stars (1992), etc. In 2171, Mars inhabitants are grouped in extended family businesses that sometimes compete, sometimes cooperate, and resist the imposition of a central authority. But Earth is forever trying to impose its will upon Mars; and so young politician-to-be Casseia of the old and powerful Majumdar family--following a brief and painful affair with ambitious, brilliant physicist Charles Franklin--will travel to Earth with her uncle Bithras to negotiate with the powers that be. Unexpectedly, the talks fizzle; worse, Casseia learns that Earth has infected Mars's artificial- intelligence ``thinkers'' with virus-like ``evolvons.'' With Earth now openly hostile, Mars must present a united front, and Casseia is elected Vice President. She realizes that what has alarmed Earth are the discoveries of Charles Franklin: his physics of ``descriptors'' allow the alteration or ``tweaking'' of matter and energy within the absolute-zero Bell Continuum. In practical terms: instantaneous communications, the ability to fry remote targets instantaneously, even the moving of entire planets! Earth attacks by activating the evolvons that sabotage Mars's thinkers, producing chaos. Charles Franklin's team retaliates, and the attack ceases. Clearly, though, this is just the first phase of a struggle that must result in Mars's subjugation--or its leaving the solar system altogether. Mundane politicking, plotting, and characters combined with stunning and remarkable invention and extrapolation. Bear is an infuriating writer in that his narrative skills never come close to matching the sheer brilliance of his ideas. So it has been; so it is here. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In the latest novel by the author of Eon ( LJ 9/15/85) and The Forge of God ( LJ 9/15/87), political theorist Casseia Majumdar and physicist Charles Franklin find a common destiny in their desire to see the colony of Mars independent of Earth's manipulations. Bear makes good use of the extended flashback to illuminate the lives of a pair of extraordinary visionaries who struggle to create a new world on an old planet. Contrasts between Earth's wasted potential and Mars's constant promise emerge through strong characterization and compelling prose. A solid purchase for any library's sf collection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.