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Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lies Thistledown: the remnants of a human society, versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war, but the government and scientists are unable to decide how to use this knowledge.
On an arid Mars, local bigwigs compete with Earth-bound interlopers to buy up land before the Un develops it and its value skyrockets. Martian Union leader Arnie Kott has an ace up his sleeve, though: an autistic boy named Manfred who seems to have the ability to see the future. In the hopes of gaining an advantage on a Martian real estate deal, powerful people force Manfred to send them into the future, where they can learn about development plans.
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.
For centuries, the red planet has enticed the people of Earth. Now an international group of scientists has colonized Mars. Leaving Earth forever, these 100 people have traveled nine months to reach their new home. This is the remarkable story of the world they create - and the hidden power struggles of those who want to control it.
A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented - something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past.
Emanuel Goldsmith, a famous poet, murdered eight people, then disappeared. Three people want to find him: an aspiring writer, an embittered scientist who wants to use him, and a policewoman who needs to put him in custody before the Selectors, a vigilante organization, get to him first.
More than a thousand years have passed since humankind intentionally destroyed its treacherous technology, choosing to revert back to a primitive tribal state. In this society the rusting brain cases of long-inert robots are considered trophies, and the scant knowledge that has survived is doled out to an inquisitive few in monasterylike "universities". It is at one such center of learning that young Tom Cushing first reads of the legendary "Place of Going to the Stars".
Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lies Thistledown: the remnants of a human society, versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war, but the government and scientists are unable to decide how to use this knowledge.
On an arid Mars, local bigwigs compete with Earth-bound interlopers to buy up land before the Un develops it and its value skyrockets. Martian Union leader Arnie Kott has an ace up his sleeve, though: an autistic boy named Manfred who seems to have the ability to see the future. In the hopes of gaining an advantage on a Martian real estate deal, powerful people force Manfred to send them into the future, where they can learn about development plans.
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.
For centuries, the red planet has enticed the people of Earth. Now an international group of scientists has colonized Mars. Leaving Earth forever, these 100 people have traveled nine months to reach their new home. This is the remarkable story of the world they create - and the hidden power struggles of those who want to control it.
A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented - something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past.
Emanuel Goldsmith, a famous poet, murdered eight people, then disappeared. Three people want to find him: an aspiring writer, an embittered scientist who wants to use him, and a policewoman who needs to put him in custody before the Selectors, a vigilante organization, get to him first.
More than a thousand years have passed since humankind intentionally destroyed its treacherous technology, choosing to revert back to a primitive tribal state. In this society the rusting brain cases of long-inert robots are considered trophies, and the scant knowledge that has survived is doled out to an inquisitive few in monasterylike "universities". It is at one such center of learning that young Tom Cushing first reads of the legendary "Place of Going to the Stars".
Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?
When an object threatens human civilization, it becomes clear that we need to venture to the stars. With just a few years' warning, this will be a race against time, and only a small number of colonists can be saved. In an America turned authoritarian, a small group of people draws up their plans to change not this world but the next. The confrontation seems inevitable, but who will prevail and at what cost?
In a future wracked by environmental catastrophe and social instability, physicist John Renfrew devises a longshot plan to use tachyons - strange, time-traveling particles - to send a warning to the past. In 1962, Gordon Bernstein, a California researcher, gets Renfrew's message as a strange pattern of interference in an experiment he's conducting.
In a cave high in the Alps, a renegade anthropologist discovers a frozen Neanderthal couple with a Homo sapiens baby. Meanwhile, in southern Russia, the U.N. investigation of a mysterious mass grave is cut short. One of the investigators, molecular biologist Kaye Lang, returns home to the U.S. to learn that her theory on human retroviruses has been verified with the discovery of SHEVA, a virus that has slept in our DNA for millions of years and is now waking up.
A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned. Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family, and her world before they are lost to her for good.
Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
Captain Jake Phillips wakes in his crash-landed craft and finds Earth transformed into a frightening new world. He faces two immediate threats that will test his survival skills to the limit. Mutated beings prowl the landscape, hunting humans and searching for the remaining resources. Without a plan in place, the battle will be lost, and humanity as Jake knows it will be destroyed. Sixth Cycle is a gritty post-apocalyptic story of survival and adventure.
Don Harvey is a citizen of the Interplanetary Federation - yet no single planet can claim him as its own. His mother was born on Venus and his father on Earth, and Don himself was born on a spaceship in trajectory between planets. When his parents abruptly summon him away from school on Earth to join them on Mars, he has no idea he's about to be plunged into deadly interplanetary intrigue. But the ship Don is traveling on is unexpectedly diverted to Venus, where the colony has launched a revolution against Earth's control.
A Princess of Mars was the first book by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the character John Carter. It led to an 11-book series featuring his adventures and became the basis for the 2012 movie. Carter is a war-weary former military captain during the Civil War who is inexplicably transported to Mars. He quickly (and reluctantly) becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions among the inhabitants of the planet.
United States of Japan is set in a gripping alternate history where the Japanese Empire rules over America with huge robots. Is resistance possible in the form of subversive video games? Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible emperor, and nobody believes that Japan's conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons, a group of rebels fighting for freedom.
Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
The nanotechnology was designed to fight cancer. Instead, it evolved into the machine plague, killing nearly five billion people and changing life on Earth forever.
Mars is a colonial world governed by corporate interests on Earth. The citizens of Mars are hardworking, brave, and intelligent, but held back by their lack of access to the best education, and the desire of Earthly powers to keep the best inventions for themselves.
The young Martians - the second and third generation born on Mars - have little loyalty to Earth and a strong belief that their planet can be independent. The revolution begins slowly, but matures to its inevitable conclusion.
"It all adds up to a blowout of a book, perhaps the best of the recent Mars novels, and certainly one of the best sf novels of the year." (Publishers Weekly)
"Moving Mars is an accomplished, thoroughly mature novel that should be placed at the top of anyone's `to be read' stack." (Science Fiction Age)
"Stunning and remarkable invention and extrapolation." (Kirkus Reviews)
This has always been one of my favorite books and I was very happy that Audible added it to it's library (the original tapes were dual track and had terrible sound quality). Greg Bear is one of those hard science authors that can write compelling believable characters and not bury you under a high tech facade. The science itself is amazing and high concept. Bear tends to write more contemporary, near future Scifi these days and I love his books, but Moving Mars is top form traditional Scifi.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
I read the book 20 years ago and enjoyed it. This audiobook is terrible quality, heavy bass, inconsistent volume levels, cut off sentences. Very low bit rate. Audible seriously needs to put up a quality version of this book. I'm asking for a refund.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
The story is interesting. As usual in a hard science fiction book, there's a fair amount of discussion of technicalities, but it's very interesting. Bear's writing style is a bit mechanical, he is in no way a prose stylist and his characters are a bit on the stiff side, but both are used well to drive the story. My only complaint is the recording itself. It sounds like it's been compressed to within an inch of its life, it occasionally sounds like its being read by a computer. It's also muffled sounding like it was first recorded on cassette. It's not horrible but its annoying, particularly if you listen on headphones.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This is a good Greg Bear story, although it takes most of the book before getting into the more mindbending hard SF elements that I like most in his work. I found the narrator's voice a touch shrill, and the recording wasn't the best, but I acclimated to it after a bit, allowing me to enjoy the story. My main gripe with Greg Bear audiobooks is that my favorites aren't available, namely the EON series and the Queen of Angels series. THESE were the books that really blew me away. Oh, and also Forge of God and Anvil of Stars were excellent as well. So, as the title says, it's just good Bear, but not the best, in this listeners' humble opinion.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
Parts of this book are hard to follow due to poor audio quality and very noticeable digital artifacts in the audio stream. Come on, Audible! You can do better than this!
The only problem with this version is the sound often becomes muddled. I had a hard time understanding some of what the reader was speaking.
This book is one of my all time favorites. Such a shame that the audio quality was so terrible. Everything sounded muffled and incredibly difficult to make out even at high volumes. Especially the effects added onto the character's voices during spacewalks made it so hard to understand.
That being said, it's one of my favorite stories from my favorite writer of science fiction, Greg Bear. Just read the book on the Kindle and skip this audio recording! Unless Audible can replace it with a version that has higher fidelity.
Good book, prolific but insightful and when you think about it. The audio, however, is quite muffled and frustrating to listen to.
If you're fascinated by space colonization, political intrigue, regional power struggles, and scientific paradigm shifts, I HIGHLY recommend this book!
One of Greg Bear's finest works! It's scope will take your breath away and terrify you with its audacious vision of God-like power!
In short, it's a ripping good yarn!
This is a fascinating story if a bit unbelievable. It is a traditional Greg Bear SCI-FI story about a future of Mars that is different then any others I have read. This is the fourth Mars book that won an award in the 1990s I guess as a result of all the Mars Lander activity during that decade. The characters are well developed story very engaging.
The audio performance is very good with alot of effort to emulate voices in suits, remote communications,etc. Overall, I really enjoyed this story.