Voyage to the Red Planet edition by Terry Bisson Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : Voyage to the Red Planet edition by Terry Bisson Literature Fiction eBooks 
"A wonderful story!"
—Los Angeles Times
"Mars a movie set, and astronauts for extras. Bisson strikes again. This is one trip you don't want to miss."
—Lucius Shepard
"Bisson makes Mars mysterious and exciting again. Funny, inventive and smart, the best kind of SF adventure!"
—San Francisco Chronicle
NASA may be bankrupt, but the dream of space travel never died.
All you need is a wildcat movie producer, a brilliant midget cinematographer, a beautiful Russian Cosmonaut, a couple of Movie Stars, and a mothballed spaceship called the Mary Poppins. Then blast off, and you are about to make Hollywood history ...
On Mars!
About the Author Best known for his short stories "They're Made out of Meat" and "Bears Discover Fire," Terry Bisson has won every major award in SF, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon and Locus awards, and France's Gran Prix de l'Imaginaire. He lives in California.
Voyage to the Red Planet edition by Terry Bisson Literature Fiction eBooks
This was really kind of fun: NASA/the Gov't can't fund the expedition to Mars, so the media funds it -- with all that entails.Recommended
Updated:
In light of some of the recent comments (https://medium.com/matter/mars-one-insider-quits-dangerously-flawed-project-2dfef95217d3) regarding the "Mars One" project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One); one cannot help but wonder -- at least a little bit -- if Mars One got the "reality program" funding model from Terry Bisson's very fun novel. Or is this a case of life imitating art?
Product details
|
Tags : Voyage to the Red Planet - Kindle edition by Terry Bisson. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Voyage to the Red Planet.,ebook,Terry Bisson,Voyage to the Red Planet,JumperCable Books,FICTION Satire,FICTION Science Fiction General
People also read other books :
- The Land Southward Darcy Hogan 9781257068784 Books
- The adventures of Seumas Beg; The rocky road to Dublin James Stephens Books
- I Heart Oregon and Washington 25 of the Portland Area Best Hikes Lisa D Holmes 9780991538201 Books
- 12 Delicious Recipes of Your Restaurant Favorites Made Healthy! edition by The Fitness Foodie Queen Health Fitness Dieting eBooks
- Autobiography of a Seaman Classic Reprint Thomas Cochrane 9781332806133 Books
Voyage to the Red Planet edition by Terry Bisson Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Look at NASA...please! If there isn't a more frightening indication of the impact of space on today's culture, I'll become a monk in space. Can you even see NASA from where you are, or is it hidden behind the lifestyles, the crime reports, the utter banality of "human interest" stories in the news? When you do hear about NASA it is either because they are requesting more money, having their budget cut by Congress, or they've delayed the shuttle launch yet again. Is today's apathy with space caused by NASA's incompentence, or vice versa? Either way, the future looks grim.
Grim tidings bring modest proposals. Bisson's proposal in Voyage to the Red Planet may be hidden by a standard SF adventure plot, but it is as cutting as Swift's ever was. When the government has to sell off various departments (like NASA) to corporations to pay back the national debt, when movie stars become a new royalty, that's where you'll find Bisson, pillorying the temples with a humor and irreverence that's a joy to read. In every chapter Bisson drops a casual remark that seems innocuous at first, but sits like a dormant virus until you immune system yells "Uncle" and then unleashes its full fury making you double- and triple-up in laughter.
The plot and writing reminded me of late 60s/early 70s Philip K. Dick, except jazzed up and in tune with the 90s. Like Dick's novels, even though Voyage to the Red Planet is set in the future, its topic is the present. Today, Bisson says, we are in danger from greedy corporations threatening to gobble up each other in a gigantic Ouroboros-orgy, we are in danger of creating a new aristocracy with its own rules and classes, we are in danger of losing our perspective on what is important and what isn't. What Bisson isn't saying, though, is that the future or the present is filled with doom. If we can doctor ourselves with a little humor and stop taking everything so damned seriously, perhaps there will be some hope for us all.
What struck me when I was reading this near future space adventure is how dated it is. Much has happened since this was originally published in 1991 (not all that long ago), such as further (robotic) exploration of Mars and the collapse of the Soviet Union, both of which never occurred in this story. A couple of the things that did happen in this fictional tale were a rapid decline of the American space program and the privatization of most aspects of government, including NASA and the U.S. Navy. The book does not present a very hopeful future as a result but it does provide a bit of subtle cultural satire.
It is told from and omniscient point of view with multiple characters, although the central one is Bass, an aging astronaut from NASA's glory days. He is approached by an entertainment conglomerate to help `salvage' a spacecraft built (but never used) by NASA and the Soviets, and to bring a crew of movie stars to Mars to make a movie and, as a result, a lot of money.
The writing is good, the characters are plausible and their individual motivations make sense, but the premise itself, in addition to being dated, just doesn't. At least not much. I accept the exaggerations about corporate takeovers of government functions for the sake of cultural satire, but how could a huge spaceship be built in orbit without it being common knowledge? Why would it be fully provisioned and then abandoned until it is salvaged by a movie company twenty years later? And sunlight digitized and stored on CDs to provide a power source? Sorry. That's not ridiculous enough to be funny or realistic enough to be believable.
All in all, this is a fairly enjoyable hard science fiction tale. It has some satire, a bit of humor, decent characters, and a plot that hangs together well. I can recommend it for Science Fiction fans looking for a good, old-fashioned story of near space.
The book came as advertised and on time. I can't wait to read it!
Very good, if a little glib at times. Big ideas and fun tone.
But since all of his others are so much better, this may well be his worst, aside from any refrigerator magnets that I've forgotten about.
If this is the only Bisson novel that you've read, please try 'Numbers Never Lie' before forming a final opinion of his works.
All the elements of good SF--sympathetic characters with enough faults to believable, a tightly knit story with enough technical detail to be true hard SF but without techno-babble.
As a strong supporter of getting humans to Mars I read most Mars adventure books and this one is high on the list of excellent, satisfying Mars fiction. Great work!
I thoroughly enjoy Terry Bisson's writing style and I love his sense of humor.
His slightly-offbeat stories are always fun to read.
But there's serious science lurking in this story, and tons of well-researched facts and details. The science is plausible; for me, that makes the story more enjoyable and more interesting.
For someone who likes good science fiction -- with some storyline aspects that are a bit off on a side road rather than on the commonly-traveled main highway -- and likes some tongue-in-cheek humor, Terry Bisson's Voyage to the Red Planet is definitely "a good read".
This was really kind of fun NASA/the Gov't can't fund the expedition to Mars, so the media funds it -- with all that entails.
Recommended
Updated
In light of some of the recent comments (https//medium.com/matter/mars-one-insider-quits-dangerously-flawed-project-2dfef95217d3) regarding the "Mars One" project (http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One); one cannot help but wonder -- at least a little bit -- if Mars One got the "reality program" funding model from Terry Bisson's very fun novel. Or is this a case of life imitating art?
0 Response to "[QPT]⋙ PDF Free Voyage to the Red Planet edition by Terry Bisson Literature Fiction eBooks"
Post a Comment