Using the Zubrin Mars Direct method, they send an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) ahead of the manned mission, to carry supplies and the return launcher. How Clark managed to engineer a human connection to his characters, I don't know.but he did, and Benford doesn't quite get it.Īfter NASA abandons plans for Mars, billionaire John Axelrod takes on the challenge of a $30b prize from the Mars Accords to be first to land and return with a list of achievements. The only thing that pulls the story along is waiting for the next test of the return vehicle engines to see if anyone is going home. The space science all plays out reasonably, but then we get into the Martian life discovery bits, which just don't play that well anymore. The drama is all about whether their return vehicle will work, and whether the second team to reach Mars will steal the thunder of the first, a private enterprise jumped up after NASA threw in the towel following a launch disaster.
The Martian Race plays the trick of moving forward from two points in the story at once, alternating between chapters about the prelaunch to Mars and the preparation for return. Unfortunately, even with what should be a lot of human tension and drama, and the appearance of an alien the like of which we haven't seen since James White's Sector General series, it's still about as dry as the Martian air.
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