Moving Mars

By: Greg Bear

Narrated by: Sharon Williams

Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's Summary

Greg Bear is "a writer who is rapidly redefining the shape of the modern hard science-fiction novel" (Keith Ferrell, Omni magazine), and in Moving Mars he explores one very plausible scenario for the future of Earth's neighboring planet.

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.

©2008 Greg Bear (P)2008 Brilliance Audio

Critic Reviews

• Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 1996

"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)

One of my favorites

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

Terrible quality audio recording

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

Good book, odd recording

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

Good Bear

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

Digital artifacts in audio

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!

Great story/book. I've heard it several times

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.

Amazing book scuttled by terrible audio recording

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, terrible audible

Good book, prolific but insightful and when you think about it. The audio, however, is quite muffled and frustrating to listen to.

A Sci-fi Masterpiece!

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!

Great book and performance

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.