Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Ace Books (New York, 2008). 1st edition, 1st printing. 304 pages. $24.95.
Description
Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime--they're going to Mars. Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebel against. And when she ventures out into the bleak Mars landscape alone one night, a simple accident leads her to the edge of death until she is saved by an angel--an angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad, and a message for the newly arrived human inhabitants of Mars: We were here first.--From publisher description.
User reviews
LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
Almost gave up this novel as its young adult focus makes it the weakest novel I have read from this author. A bratty (but ironically also scholarly when it suits the narrative) young girl narrates most of the first part, which is a dull account of a journey to Mars - lots of exciting stuff about
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the lack of bathroom facilities. On Mars events take a very strange turn, as the founding of a colony thread is dumped in favour of a plot twist that would not look out of place on 'Lost in Space'. Then things switch into a Clarkean scenario with a discovery on Triton. Possibly good for the younger reader, but too formulaic and prone to info-dumping through cardboard characters for us old-timers. Show Less
LibraryThing member baubie
I read Marsbound after heading Haldeman's The Forever War. As other reviews have mentioned, Marsbound is definitely a book geared towards the "young adult" and will probably not satisfy those looking for a hard science fiction book. I found the plot to be simple, the conversations to be shallow,
The story is somewhat interesting and explores some topics that often come up in first contact situations but I couldn't help feeling like I had read the same story before.
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and the sexuality to be a little forced. There's a second book in the series called Starbound but i have no real desire to read it after reading this one.The story is somewhat interesting and explores some topics that often come up in first contact situations but I couldn't help feeling like I had read the same story before.
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LibraryThing member clong
I was disappointed by Marsbound. It had a reasonably intriguing ending, but otherwise was pretty pedestrian. I found the science of the space elevator and mars journey and mars colony to be reasonably interesting, but both the protagonist, Carmen, and her adventures felt superficial and far from
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compelling. Perhaps I am not the intended audience for this book? It's not explicitly YA, and indeed the sex is more explicit than you would expect for YA, but the characterization and storytelling were somewhat simple. Show Less
LibraryThing member grizzly.anderson
The cover blurb on Marsbound covers about the first third of the book. Carmen Dula and her family travel to Mars to live with the colony there for a few years. Once there Carmen gets cross-ways of the local administrator and then discovers a group of aliens that have been living on Mars for
Mostly though, Marsbound reads like Imperial Earth or The Fountains of Paradise. The book is more of a brief exploration of technology (space elevators, travel to Mars, living on Mars) and the possibilities of an entirely enigmatic alien race encountering Humans. The story itself skips across several years of time, focusing on a few days or weeks here and there. The characters are limited at best. Carmen, the narrator and main character is 19 and unsure of herself. She meets Paul, her one and only lover. She has parents and a brother because you have to come from somewhere. There are other Colonists because you can't be on Mars alone. There is a misopedist administrator because you have to have a villain. There is an alien that speaks perfect English because you have to get exposition from somewhere. And there is an afterward because you have to pluck at the heartstrings a little to call it a novel and not an essay.
While it may not have the depth of sentiment and passionate message of The Forever War and Forever Peace, it isn't a bad novel. It is reasonably entertaining, it covers reasonably interesting topics, and it is a quick read. If you like Robert Forward and Imperial Earth, you'll probably like Marsbound.
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thousands of years. The rest of the book concerns what happens after the aliens are been discovered, what their origins are and a little of what the consequences are.Mostly though, Marsbound reads like Imperial Earth or The Fountains of Paradise. The book is more of a brief exploration of technology (space elevators, travel to Mars, living on Mars) and the possibilities of an entirely enigmatic alien race encountering Humans. The story itself skips across several years of time, focusing on a few days or weeks here and there. The characters are limited at best. Carmen, the narrator and main character is 19 and unsure of herself. She meets Paul, her one and only lover. She has parents and a brother because you have to come from somewhere. There are other Colonists because you can't be on Mars alone. There is a misopedist administrator because you have to have a villain. There is an alien that speaks perfect English because you have to get exposition from somewhere. And there is an afterward because you have to pluck at the heartstrings a little to call it a novel and not an essay.
While it may not have the depth of sentiment and passionate message of The Forever War and Forever Peace, it isn't a bad novel. It is reasonably entertaining, it covers reasonably interesting topics, and it is a quick read. If you like Robert Forward and Imperial Earth, you'll probably like Marsbound.
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LibraryThing member PLReader
There is not much originality (though plenty of cliches) in this novel! The story is a familar one with only a few interesting scenes along the way.
LibraryThing member Mardel
I've never read anything by Joe Haldeman before and I picked up Marsbound on a whim (looking for some new Sci/Fi). I've finished reading it, read it pretty quickly, but can't say that I feel wowed by it. It was interesting - or I wouldn't have been able to finish reading it. But it wasn't "DAMN!"
Marsbound is about a young woman and her family. They've decided to go to the planet Mars for a year to study. Carmen, Card (her brother) and her parents go to Mars after a year of studying in preparation. The beginning of the novel is about the family traveling up the elevator, meeting other passengers and the pilot and their experiences on the elevator. This is a significant part of the story - they travel up to a space station where tourists visit, stay for a bit then travel on up a little higher until they get boosted on over to Mars.
The second part of the novel is about the family and others settling in, getting to know the Mars longtimers and how Carmen rubs the person in charge the wrong way. The kids plan to try something that they end up getting caught for, Carmen has twice the punishment that others do. She's angry about it and sneaks out at night to walk around, thinking vaguely about pulling a prank when she falls through a hole in the surface, damages her suit, and starts to freeze to death as well as run out of air when she is saved by....something that resembles a potato. They are not the first people on Mars afterall.
Third part of the novel deals with the "Martians" and the humans getting to know each other and the danger they all eventually face. On top of that, Carmen is still the main suspect - she's spied on by this crazed administrator.
The story itself was interesting - interesting plot and sublpots. The characterizations are possible the first time that I can understand when people say they didn't "connect" with the characters. I never really got that - because I don't feel like I need to understand or empathize with a character to enjoy a story. But I felt absolutely nothing while reading about any of the characters in this novel. The writing style itself might be the cause - it's written in a journal-esque style. It's first person and there's a lot of what I think is passive voice (not quite sure, just think so). There is some dialogue (which isn't bad, it's actually okay) but most of the story is the main character telling what happened. This is probably why i didn't really enjoy the story so much. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I was almost bored, and the whole time I was reading there was no moments of wonder or excitement. It was like being told a story in a monotone. that's the best way I have of describing it. There is a sequel, but I'm not sure I want to read it.
I do want to note though, that there were some things I did find kind of interesting - the Martians, for one. There was an interesting story behind them - they were families of Martians who all had their functions - one was a memory family, there were the healers, and there was one that stood out, the leader. He was bigger than the rest, and the only one of his family born at the same time. They had a language that used sounds as well as voice and though they could learn other languages people weren't able to really learn the Martian language.
The explanations of the space elevator was interesting and never relied on infodumps - no longwinded explanations of how it worked, the gravity, etc. The way it was presented by Carmen was interesting. And there were teases of disasters that befell people on earth, mentioned a few times before Carmen explained exactly what happened. So it was a relief to me that there was no informational dumps, especially since they style of writing just felt flat for me.
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for me. Marsbound is about a young woman and her family. They've decided to go to the planet Mars for a year to study. Carmen, Card (her brother) and her parents go to Mars after a year of studying in preparation. The beginning of the novel is about the family traveling up the elevator, meeting other passengers and the pilot and their experiences on the elevator. This is a significant part of the story - they travel up to a space station where tourists visit, stay for a bit then travel on up a little higher until they get boosted on over to Mars.
The second part of the novel is about the family and others settling in, getting to know the Mars longtimers and how Carmen rubs the person in charge the wrong way. The kids plan to try something that they end up getting caught for, Carmen has twice the punishment that others do. She's angry about it and sneaks out at night to walk around, thinking vaguely about pulling a prank when she falls through a hole in the surface, damages her suit, and starts to freeze to death as well as run out of air when she is saved by....something that resembles a potato. They are not the first people on Mars afterall.
Third part of the novel deals with the "Martians" and the humans getting to know each other and the danger they all eventually face. On top of that, Carmen is still the main suspect - she's spied on by this crazed administrator.
The story itself was interesting - interesting plot and sublpots. The characterizations are possible the first time that I can understand when people say they didn't "connect" with the characters. I never really got that - because I don't feel like I need to understand or empathize with a character to enjoy a story. But I felt absolutely nothing while reading about any of the characters in this novel. The writing style itself might be the cause - it's written in a journal-esque style. It's first person and there's a lot of what I think is passive voice (not quite sure, just think so). There is some dialogue (which isn't bad, it's actually okay) but most of the story is the main character telling what happened. This is probably why i didn't really enjoy the story so much. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I was almost bored, and the whole time I was reading there was no moments of wonder or excitement. It was like being told a story in a monotone. that's the best way I have of describing it. There is a sequel, but I'm not sure I want to read it.
I do want to note though, that there were some things I did find kind of interesting - the Martians, for one. There was an interesting story behind them - they were families of Martians who all had their functions - one was a memory family, there were the healers, and there was one that stood out, the leader. He was bigger than the rest, and the only one of his family born at the same time. They had a language that used sounds as well as voice and though they could learn other languages people weren't able to really learn the Martian language.
The explanations of the space elevator was interesting and never relied on infodumps - no longwinded explanations of how it worked, the gravity, etc. The way it was presented by Carmen was interesting. And there were teases of disasters that befell people on earth, mentioned a few times before Carmen explained exactly what happened. So it was a relief to me that there was no informational dumps, especially since they style of writing just felt flat for me.
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LibraryThing member DanThompson
I picked this one at random from a pile of samples and was totally sucked in. It’s a first person narrative of an eighteen year old girl who emigrates to Mars with her family in one of the first waves of colonists/explorers and then actually finds martians… sort of.
The science is pretty good,
This book also comes close to one of my favorite kinds of conflict, where the bad guy isn’t really a bad guy, just that he is making decisions from his own values, and those decisions and actions end up conflicting with our hero’s goals. There are two bad guys in this. The first is a local administrator who is doing her best to protect the Mars outpost and humanity at large and who makes some bad calls in the process. The second is a distant group that is acting to protect itself at any cost with no apologies to those who get in the way.
In the end, heroes are heroic, bad guys are thwarted, and sacrifices are noble. It finishes with a semi-open happy ending, and I believe there are at least two sequels, so I may be looking at those soon.
The science is pretty good,
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even for the martians (hence the “sort of”), and it was a lot of that minutiae that drew me in. No, it’s not page after page of technical exposition. Rather, it shows a lot of the “boring” day to day business of riding a space elevator up to an interplanetary ship, making the trip across the void, landing, and living in the harsh conditions of another planet. I suppose I liked it for many of the same reasons I enjoyed the daily details of Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper series, i.e. it made the fantastic life of space travel feel real without making it mundane. By the time we got to the “martians”, I was completely drawn into her personal world.This book also comes close to one of my favorite kinds of conflict, where the bad guy isn’t really a bad guy, just that he is making decisions from his own values, and those decisions and actions end up conflicting with our hero’s goals. There are two bad guys in this. The first is a local administrator who is doing her best to protect the Mars outpost and humanity at large and who makes some bad calls in the process. The second is a distant group that is acting to protect itself at any cost with no apologies to those who get in the way.
In the end, heroes are heroic, bad guys are thwarted, and sacrifices are noble. It finishes with a semi-open happy ending, and I believe there are at least two sequels, so I may be looking at those soon.
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LibraryThing member Cataloger623
Get this book from your library. I would warn parents with a conservative mindset to read the book before letting your pre-teen to read it. In some families the the choices the main character makes would make for a lively discussion. beyond that reservation the story was an OK read.
attempts to a SciFi story for a teen mainly female audience. Book has fairly explicit sexual content that would be not be apporiate for pre teens. There is a reasonable attempt at character development. The "villain" of the work reads like bad mom from a sitcom.
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Haldemanattempts to a SciFi story for a teen mainly female audience. Book has fairly explicit sexual content that would be not be apporiate for pre teens. There is a reasonable attempt at character development. The "villain" of the work reads like bad mom from a sitcom.
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LibraryThing member DLMorrese
This is a story of the relatively near future, the first Mars colony, and some interesting aliens. In this respect, it’s quite good; the technology is realistic and well described, the plot makes sense, and the aliens are wonderfully alien.
A number of things did not suit my personal taste,
The fist half of the book can be skimmed or simply skipped. It is mainly a description of a ride up the space elevator and an eight-month journey to Mars aboard a spaceship. The descriptions are good and describe believably what a space elevator ride and uneventful flight to Mars might be like, but a hundred-plus pages of this kind of thing is simply a bit much. The technology is interesting, but nothing happens. There are no amazing discoveries or mysteries and no real conflicts to be resolved.
Except for one of the aliens, who we really don’t meet until fairly late in the book, I didn’t much care for any of the characters. The main character, Carmen Dula, is eighteen years old when we fist meet her. I found nothing admirable or even especially likeable about her. She has the raging hormones of a woman a few years older and the emotional maturity of a girl a few years younger. She seemed to have no sense of perspective. She’s on her way to Mars, but her teenage angst about friends and school seem to prevent her from appreciating how unique this is. This may mark her as normal, but normal in a science fiction novel isn’t interesting. Her misplaced sense of priorities continues even after meeting the aliens because she seems to devote most of her thinking to her love affair with the captain of the ship that brought them to Mars. Don’t get me wrong. Love affairs are fine (between consenting adults and all that), but they’re normal. People do that all the time. It’s not interesting. (You can probably see why romance novels don’t do much for me.)
The second part of the book, however, does have a decent plot. As I said, the aliens are very alien. To say much more about them would be a plot spoiler though, and I don’t like to do that.
There are two sequels to Marsbound, and I’m willing to give them a shot. I can’t say this first book appealed much to me, though.
A number of things did not suit my personal taste,
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though. The first is that the story is told in first person. This isn’t necessarily bad, but I find it works best for detective novels. It’s probably great for romance novels, too, but those have no appeal for me. Again, it’s a matter of personal taste. The first person narrative didn’t work for me especially in this book probably because I felt no affinity for the main character. More on that later.The fist half of the book can be skimmed or simply skipped. It is mainly a description of a ride up the space elevator and an eight-month journey to Mars aboard a spaceship. The descriptions are good and describe believably what a space elevator ride and uneventful flight to Mars might be like, but a hundred-plus pages of this kind of thing is simply a bit much. The technology is interesting, but nothing happens. There are no amazing discoveries or mysteries and no real conflicts to be resolved.
Except for one of the aliens, who we really don’t meet until fairly late in the book, I didn’t much care for any of the characters. The main character, Carmen Dula, is eighteen years old when we fist meet her. I found nothing admirable or even especially likeable about her. She has the raging hormones of a woman a few years older and the emotional maturity of a girl a few years younger. She seemed to have no sense of perspective. She’s on her way to Mars, but her teenage angst about friends and school seem to prevent her from appreciating how unique this is. This may mark her as normal, but normal in a science fiction novel isn’t interesting. Her misplaced sense of priorities continues even after meeting the aliens because she seems to devote most of her thinking to her love affair with the captain of the ship that brought them to Mars. Don’t get me wrong. Love affairs are fine (between consenting adults and all that), but they’re normal. People do that all the time. It’s not interesting. (You can probably see why romance novels don’t do much for me.)
The second part of the book, however, does have a decent plot. As I said, the aliens are very alien. To say much more about them would be a plot spoiler though, and I don’t like to do that.
There are two sequels to Marsbound, and I’m willing to give them a shot. I can’t say this first book appealed much to me, though.
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LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
An old-fashioned science-fiction adventure, but no less enjoyable for its somewhat retro nature. For some reason I thought this was YA--I wouldn't call it that.
LibraryThing member ScoLgo
Reviewing the full trilogy, (here be spoilers)...
#1 - Marsbound
Quite a good book and a very good opener to the trilogy. One of the more interesting aspects was the way Haldeman subtly managed to change the voice of the protagonist as she grew up from a teenage girl into a young woman. At the
#2 - Starbound
A solid middle volume. The pace slackens a bit from the first novel but, considering it's mostly about a team of human emissaries traveling to another star system, it cruises along pretty well. There is some weird pseudo-science stuff that is essentially explained away using Clarke's Axiom; "Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic". Apart from that, the rest of the science in the book seems pretty solid while not getting in the way of keeping things moving forward, (note: I am not a rocket scientist so please don't lambaste me if the science is actually completely wonky).
Overall, this is a good book that carries the reader nicely from the end of Marsbound into the beginning of Earthbound.
#3 - Earthbound
The third book in the trilogy is a solid closing volume. The team has now returned from their trip to meet with The Others to find that the Earthly quarantine has been lifted. In this book therefore, most of the action takes place back on Terra. And there is a good amount of action. Haldeman paints a brutal and, to my mind, realistic picture of how things might progress should a scenario like this ever come to pass. Despite the grim narrative, the novel does end on a hopeful note.
The Trilogy (spoiler warning!)
A word about the entire trilogy: Haldeman takes the first-contact trope and stands it a bit on its' ear; Instead of humanity being initially out-classed by a vastly superior race and then somehow figuring a way to triumph through, y'know, "good old-fashioned human ingenuity & stuff", Haldeman imagines a scenario where humanity is not up to the task of overcoming the stacked odds. I've read many negative reviews of this series and, frankly, I don't get it. Does everyone want a happy ending all the time? The writing is smart, the characters are fairly well-developed - especially the protagonist, and the plot moves well throughout all three books. The situation is, quite honestly, about the most likely thing that we would face if another species happened to be keeping an eye on us. Think about it; A race of beings that have the ability to travel through interstellar space would realistically be so technologically advanced compared to us that, if they wanted to wipe us out, and we tried to fight back, it would be like a pack of squirrels trying to stop a bulldozer.
I give books #1 and #3 four solid stars each. Book #2 gets 3.25 stars and I average the trilogy at 3.75 overall.
#1 - Marsbound
Quite a good book and a very good opener to the trilogy. One of the more interesting aspects was the way Haldeman subtly managed to change the voice of the protagonist as she grew up from a teenage girl into a young woman. At the
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beginning of the story, Carmen Dula is leaving her Florida home to go live on Mars for a few years with her family. By the end of the book, she is a 'Martian', quarantined away from her home planet, and now facing a mission to another star system to try and deal with a vastly superior alien threat.#2 - Starbound
A solid middle volume. The pace slackens a bit from the first novel but, considering it's mostly about a team of human emissaries traveling to another star system, it cruises along pretty well. There is some weird pseudo-science stuff that is essentially explained away using Clarke's Axiom; "Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic". Apart from that, the rest of the science in the book seems pretty solid while not getting in the way of keeping things moving forward, (note: I am not a rocket scientist so please don't lambaste me if the science is actually completely wonky).
Overall, this is a good book that carries the reader nicely from the end of Marsbound into the beginning of Earthbound.
#3 - Earthbound
The third book in the trilogy is a solid closing volume. The team has now returned from their trip to meet with The Others to find that the Earthly quarantine has been lifted. In this book therefore, most of the action takes place back on Terra. And there is a good amount of action. Haldeman paints a brutal and, to my mind, realistic picture of how things might progress should a scenario like this ever come to pass. Despite the grim narrative, the novel does end on a hopeful note.
The Trilogy (spoiler warning!)
A word about the entire trilogy: Haldeman takes the first-contact trope and stands it a bit on its' ear; Instead of humanity being initially out-classed by a vastly superior race and then somehow figuring a way to triumph through, y'know, "good old-fashioned human ingenuity & stuff", Haldeman imagines a scenario where humanity is not up to the task of overcoming the stacked odds. I've read many negative reviews of this series and, frankly, I don't get it. Does everyone want a happy ending all the time? The writing is smart, the characters are fairly well-developed - especially the protagonist, and the plot moves well throughout all three books. The situation is, quite honestly, about the most likely thing that we would face if another species happened to be keeping an eye on us. Think about it; A race of beings that have the ability to travel through interstellar space would realistically be so technologically advanced compared to us that, if they wanted to wipe us out, and we tried to fight back, it would be like a pack of squirrels trying to stop a bulldozer.
I give books #1 and #3 four solid stars each. Book #2 gets 3.25 stars and I average the trilogy at 3.75 overall.
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Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2009)
Locus Recommended Reading (2008)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2008-08
Physical description
304 p.; 6.5 inches
ISBN
9780441015955