Mars, Inc.
How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that’s for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate
powerplays, a generous dollop of seduction — both in and out of the
boardroom — and money, money, money!
Art Thrasher knows this. He
is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has
utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a “club” or billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the
dream is accomplished. But these are men and women who are tough
cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line, and disdainful of
pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else’s dreams come true.
But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important
regard: he’s a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful
company. But it’s going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry
and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and
sabotage — and get a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.
The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to humans on Mars — or die trying!
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Ben Bova
Benjamin William Bova (1932–2020) was an American writer. He was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, six-time winner of the Hugo Award, an editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, an editorial director of Omni; he was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.
As of February 2016, Bova had written over 124 books in various genres. He edited several works, including The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973) and Nebula Awards Showcase 2008. He wrote the Grand Tour novel series about exploration and colonization of the Solar System by humans. Reviewing a collection of 12 of the series published in 2004, The New York Times described Bova as "the last of the great pulp writers".
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Reviews and Comments
With a title like Mars, Inc. and the name Ben Bova attached to it, you would think you'd know what to expect. Personally, I was excited to get my hands on an ARC,and went into this with high hopes. As much as I tried to hold onto those hopes, though, the 'real' story I expected to find beginning in the next chapter never materialized. This was so very much not what I was expecting from a master like Ben Bova. It felt like a throwback to 60s and 70s pulp sci-fi, but not in a good way. It was cheap, sexist, and almost as lazy in respect to its business and it politics as it was smart in respect to its science - and we don't get nearly enough of that. What's more, there's no payoff, no grand spectacle, just the fact of a launch to end the book that we don't even get to see, much less experience. Disappointing in just about every respect. I do wonder if there's a sequel to come, but I have neither the patience nor the interest for that. http://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.ca/2013/12/from-alderaan-to-mars-disappointing.html
