I actually listened to the BBC radio production, so I'm don't really know how much it differed from the novel. It was fun to listen to, even if the space noises and ray-gun sounds were pretty hokey- were they cliche at the time this was made? I don't know. I vaguely knew the story, since it's such a classic, but I'm glad I heard the whole thing. Really classic, campy sci-fi is pretty fun.

BLURB
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.

REVIEW
You know when you read a book, almost in a single sitting, and you realise while you're reading it that you'll never look at the world quite the same way again? This was one of those books for me.
I read it when I was about 10years old, and it really shaped my passion for science fiction, with more emphasis on the science (in that, it wasn't some fuzzy versoin where every planet is as comparable to our own and the very planet might just work in or against our favour).

read for fall 2007 semester. Loved it, as I do all HG Wells writing. Splendid to sample the beginnings of sci fi.

Martian invasion of the world told from perspective of educated by-stander

Definitely a diversion from Robin Cook's typical medical thrillers. While still medically based there was much more of a sci-fi aspect that I didn't really care for as a whole. However, true to his other novels it was a QUICK read and I was very engrossed in it.

Just when we all thought the Robert Heinlein canon was complete, along come notes and an outline for an unfinished manuscript that his literary estate decided to have completed and published. This is a novel begun more than fifty years ago, when one of its coauthors was seven years old, and completed more than thirteen years after the death of the other coauthor.


It's also a pretty darn good book. It's not true Heinlein, but it's not a cheap imitation of Robert Heinlein either. Spider Robinson was specifically told not to try and 'do the literary equivalent of a Rich Little impersonation of Robert Heinlein.' He took Heinlein's outline and turned it into something very special indeed: a story set in Heinlein's well-crafted Future History but not necessarily a typical Heinlein piece. So we get the universe populated by Venerian dragons and three-legged Martian mystics, farmers on Ganymede and cities built deep inside the Moon, and fusion-powered torchships plying the spaceways throughout the solar system and beyond.


And then Robinson goes and destroys it all. The 'Variable Star' of this story turns out to be our own Sun. For reasons unknown, the Sun goes nova and incinerates the entire solar system, leaving behind a few dozen far-flung interstellar colonies who are themselves in jeopardy once the wavefront from the explosion reaches them.


Just ahead of the wavefront is the CSS Charles Sheffield (named for another of the few authors who quite possibly could have played in Heinlein's universe with credibility); aboard is Joel Johnston, a musician who narrowly escaped marrying into the uber-rich Conrad family and having the remainder of his existence--and his identity--dictated to him. Six years out on its way to Brasil Novo, a colony world 40 light-years from Earth, the Sheffield has already had its share of problems.


Since the ship is traveling just below the speed of light, and the wavefront is traveling at the speed of light, death seems all but a certainty for the colonists. Or is it? Joel's business with the Conrad family (and his ex-fiancee Jinny) is not yet finished. They have the means to rescue him, but Joel's survival may come with too dear a price. Even the Devil gives something back in exchange for your soul. The Conrads aren't entirely as generous.


Most of the story is constructed around Joel's decision to depart Earth forever and the society that he helps build aboard the colony ship; the actual payoff comes in the last third of the book. Joel is anything but the typical omnicompetent Heinlein hero: he's a very gifted musician and was brought up as a farmer (one of an ironic few who are being sent to found an agricultural colony) but he makes serious technical and interpersonal errors that impact his life and the lives of others. Indeed, this character (unlike most Heinlein characters) is running from his mistakes rather than confronting them. Ultimately he must confront himself in order to ensure not only his survival but the survival of the human race.


It would be a mistake to say that Heinlein shelved Variable Star completely; several of the ideas he developed in 1955 showed up in later novels. The use of instantaneous telepathy as a means of interstellar communication appears in Time for the Stars (1956). The notion of time travel (in the form of relativistic time contraction in this case) to bring an older man and a young girl close enough in age to become lovers first appears in The Door Into Summer (1957) and shows up in many other Heinlein stories. The spunky young female protagonist who thinks nothing of giving the finger to the system shows up first and best in 1963's Podkayne of Mars. Even Johnston's rebellion against the Conrad clan to make his own future, though hardly unique in literature, is echoed in 1959's Starship Troopers. Many, many other ideas in Heinlein's later work can be found in Variable Star.


There are updates from the 1950's incorporated into the story, but not as consistently as I would have hoped. This is still a universe where Leslie Lecroix, not Neil Armstrong, was the first man on the Moon, and where Jupiter's moons are habitable (the radiation environment at Ganymede would fry anything and anyone living on its surface; no hint is given of alternate techonology that would have permitted colonization). The moving highways Heinlein predicted would replace the interstate highway system in the late 20th century are still in use more than a hundred years after Heinlein's original history predicted their obsolesence. Heinlein's famous three-legged transcendent Martians (as seen in 1949's Red Planet and 1961's Stranger in a Strange Land) and Venerians from 1951's Between Planets exist, but contact with them seems to have had no impact on human philosophy, theology, or politics whatsoever. Indeed, the Martians--who had destroyed the planet now known as the Asteroid Belt and had contemplated destroying the Earth just for the sake of art--may even have been responsible for the whole thing, but nobody considers that idea.


The 9/11 attacks still happen and the United States responds as in our timeline. This does eventually put an ultra-fundamentalist government in charge of the United States as in Heinlein's original Future History (especially in Revolt in 2100) and the consequences are about as Heinlein had developed. However, I have a hard time believing that Osama bin Laden and Valentine Michael Smith--or the beings who raised him--could exist in the same universe. Osama would find himself sent 'elsewhere' as soon as he proposed someone hijack a plane and fly it into a building. For that matter, the security apparatus of the United States and other nations seems much more efficient in Heinlein's Future History: at its best, the United States has become a near-dictatorship, causing the best and brightest to leave for the stars. At its worst, a homegrown hybrid of Ayatollah Khomeini and Jerry Falwell is in charge and people can be made to disappear. I doubt al Qaeda could even function on a meaningful level in such an environment.


The inclusion of 9/11 was probably necessary but seemed forced. I would have had an easier time believing that Nehemiah Scudder's operatives caused the attack and framed a foreign group, thus setting the stage for him to take control of the country. The same analogies Robinson drew to support the point he makes (brilliantly) could have been drawn while staying more consistent with the Future History.


This is the book's biggest weakness. Robinson has put a great deal of work into coming up with a convincing retcon but doing so weakens much of Heinlein's original vision. It's a good enough book on its own, but how much is Robinson and how much is Heinlein? An annotated version, including Heinlein's original eight-page outline, would be very welcome. Shared visions are great, but knowing who's contributing what is even better--I'm inclined to read more of Spider Robinson's considerable body of original work because of this book.


Is it worth reading? Definitely. It's not Heinlein but it is Heinlein's playground. And it's good to know that the playground is still open. But anyone expecting to hear the Master's voice as more than a whisper into another talented writer's ear is going to be disappointed. Approach this book on its own merits. The vision persists even if the voice has been silenced.

I'm finding that I'm gravitating toward certain authors consistently in my reading based upon my personal opinion of their particular strengths. For alternate history with a subtle sense of humor and a broad cast of realistic characters, Harry Turtledove is my favorite with Eric Flint a close second. For straight -on action and adventure combined with highly detailed research, S. M. Stirling is tops. For old-fashioned space opera, David Weber's Honor Harrington series wins out. And for hardcore, realistic science fiction, I enjoy Ben Bova.

Bova is a genuine futurist; those who are familiar with his work with the old Omni magazine will know him as someone with a sharp, perceptive eye into the future. All of his future predictions are based upon extrapolation from current trends. And it's not just technology--the whole social landscape, from politics to corporate governance to religion, gets treated with the same insight. Bova amongst modern writers is as close to the Dean himself, Robert Heinlein, as anyone I've found--but better in that his characters are more realistic. They're competent but they aren't supermen. They can be hurt. And that's the thrust of this story.

Mance Bracknell is a promising young engineer who's just completed his dream project: a space elevator designed to reduce the cost of getting to orbit down to pennies per kilogram. He's also just proposed to his fiancee and is riding high in general. But his dreams--and his life--come apart at the seams when the project is sabotaged, resulting in millions of deaths. His closest friend (and romantic rival) takes the the opportunity to steal his fiancee, and his spiritual advisor is operating under another agenda entirely. Behind all of these is a larger plot, involving a major corporation that will stop at nothing to ensure its competitive edge. Bracknell is framed and exiled, and after happening into a huge fortune plots a grand scheme for revenge that will not only undo those who've hurt him but burn a hole into his own soul in the end.

Got all that? High school kids take note - this is the basic book report for The Count of Monte Cristo, transposed into Bova's setting and characters.

That right there is my biggest disappointment. An author of Bova's stature doesn't need to lift from anything else, let alone one of the greatest and most recognizeable pieces of historical fiction ever written. Even if you've never read Alexandre Dumas' novel, there are a number of movie versions that have been released over the years, as recently as six years ago. I will give Bova credit, however, for an original ending: in the end, Bracknell is able to forgive one of his targets (even attempting to reverse the effects of his revenge) and helps another find his way to redemption. As in Monte Cristo, the third target commits suicide but all evidence suggests that he probably wasn't much of a loss anyway.

But in the end the plot takes away from the setting itself: Bova's fascinating late 21st/early 22nd century Solar System where the rival Masterson and Yamagata Corporations at once partner and contend for control of resources and people from Mercury to Saturn, and where wars are fought in the Asteroid Belt. Nanotechnology reigns supreme and creates engineering and medical miracles everywhere but on Earth, where the Luddite New Morality tries to suppress any form of knowledge or technology that appears to oppose its particular form of religious bigotry. And life is found everywhere--silicon snakes with sulfur blood on Venus; not only microbes but ruins of temples and villages on Mars; and serpents swimming in the seas of Jupiter that may be as intelligent as humans. Even the rings of Saturn themselves are alive. This is the Future History that Robert Heinlein would have built if he'd been born 25 years later (as Bova was).


Mercury is the title of the book but not really a huge part of it: most of the action takes place on Earth, the Moon (known as Selene after the name taken by its independent government) and the Asteroid Belt. Mercury itself is the site where revenge is executed, the site where the Yamagata Corporation is building solar power satellites ostensibly to supply cheap power to Earth but in reality to build a laser-powered solar sail for a voyage to Alpha Centauri. More focus on that, and less on the revenge plot, would have been an awesome story!

Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed the character study. Bova took Dumas' idea and gave it an interesting twist. But I would have enjoyed a book twice as long that explored more of Mercury itself (as do Bova's other planet-titled books). Mercury is the least explored of the major planets (the Mariner 10 mission in 1975 was only able to map a third of the planet and the MESSENGER mission is currently en route) which probably limits the amout of data he could have used, but an author of Ben Bova's stature and insight could have made some credible inferences. Contrast Monte Cristo, where the culture, politics and intrigue of Napoleonic France were a central part of the book. It is a novel about France as much as it is about revenge. I really didn't mind the revenge story but I was really looking forward to a story about Mercury as well--even if the specifics may well need to be revised in about eight years.


This was a pretty good book, but based upon the author's ability and his previous track record with this series, I expected much more.

The Ender series is great, and Ender's Game is the best, so War of Gifts is awesome! I love that it takes us back to battle school, since there are only two books that cover that, Ender's Shadow and Ender's Game. It is really a heartwarming story, perfect for Christmas, and we even get another encounter with Ender and Dink. If you haven't read the series, or at least Ender's Game, it's not really going to make alot of sense, since it is just a snapshot of a certain time in battle school.

Ahh, this was a short book. it was cool to read about battle school again.

This classic book is still a great read today, and surprisingly doesn't seem at all dated even though it takes place in the early 1900s.
A mysterious object land out in a country meadow in England. An exciting and somewhat creepy read!
***I also wanted to add that the book is quite different than the movie that came out a few years ago. Even the characters are different.