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Title: The Forge of Mars by Bruce Balfour ISBN: 0-441-00954-9 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Marvelous characters
Comment: On the surface, Bruce Balfour's new novel, The Forge of Mars, is a science fiction thriller with enough realistic science in it that you come away with the feeling that you've learned something. A Navajo NASA scientist is given the opportunity to pursue his groundbreaking research on Mars, unaware that shadowy government forces with their own agenda have manipulated him into a confrontation with a powerful alien intelligence. However, if you look for deeper meaning, you realize that Balfour's novel is about the human mind, human weaknesses, and how our personal interpretations of reality can alter the world in which we live. Balfour mixes a literary effort with the excitement of a mass-market genre. His style is simple, but poetic, vividly painting both the stark realities of the Martian landscape and the turbulent mental landscapes of the main characters -- ranging from a Navajo scientist fighting the shadows to a Russian general fighting for a lost ideology. I was sorry to see this story end, and I hope to see more from this author in the near future.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant and realistic
Comment: I just stayed up till dawn to finish THE FORGE OF MARS, and I am still reeling from this magnificent book. I loved the contrast of Navajo culture with the high-tech of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, and I didn't want the story to end.
In this book, Balfour creates a fully-realized world fifty years from now, with dark conspiracies behind the scenes and characters striving to come to grips with the modern world and forces beyond their control. The writing is extraordinary, compelling, and generates a sense of wonder. The stories of Tau, Kate, and Zhukov are exciting, disturbing, and enthralling.
Balfour carefully lays out several different strands of story and then braids them together with unerring skill -- the kind of plotting that trips up a lot of writers but looks easy when done by a master. On the surface, it is a gripping adventure story; but it is much more than that, for Balfour regularly brings us face-to-face with the moral dimensions of his characters. We care about their world, their struggles, and Tau's efforts to unravel the great mysteries.
I want more. Right now.
Rating: 4
Summary: Impressive, but it leaves too many questions unanswered
Comment: Bruce Balfour's The Forge of Mars is certainly an interesting, singular science fiction novel, but it seems to lack a certain oomph. The rousing adventure I was promised was not quite as rousing as I had expected (especially over the course of the first 200 pages), and the novel seems to me to lack just a little bit of cohesion. While Balfour's characterization of his protagonist is quite strong, I never came to adequately understand several of the secondary characters and their actions to my own satisfaction. Still, the novel represents science fiction well worth reading.
Tau Wolfsinger is a brilliant NASA technician struggling to get his ideas taken seriously in the halls of bureaucracy. A man of Navajo descent, he has a way of looking at science and the world that does not fit the corporate mold of over-specialization, and like many an eccentric genius he does not have any desire to play the game that leads to rapid promotion within an organization. Wolfsinger's interest is in artificial intelligence. His pet proposal would have him designing an artificial intelligence capable of procreating itself, learning and advancing on its own through a form of coevolution as weak links in the nanotechnology development are weeded out, and eventually (albeit quickly) out-performing and out-analyzing human beings. Grant my proposal, he says, and I will create an AI that will begin with nanotechnology and build an entire human colony all by itself. No one at NASA wants to go along with his "dangerous" ideas, though.
Enter the Davros Group and secret discoveries on Mars. The remains of an alien civilization have been discovered, among which is a portal that the Russian scientists in control of the base have been unable to figure out. Through a somewhat clumsy set of circumstances, Wolfsinger is suddenly given the money to pursue his dream but is coerced into doing his work on Mars. Here both he and his girlfriend become pawns of powerful factions who are never really fleshed out sufficiently for my liking. The work on the alien Martial portal is being conducted (and kept secret) by the Russian military, but alien intelligences on Mars contend with the Russians over control of Wolfsinger's contributions to pivotal events bearing possibly significant repercussions back on Earth.
The science of this novel is detailed and impressive, as Balfour delights in theorizing on the practical uses of nanotechnology in the future. The weak link in the story, though, involves the political shenanigans working behind the scenes. The mysterious Davros Group is barely explained at all, making its cooperation with a Russian military officer hoping to restore Russia as a superpower seems rather tenuous. Even the actions of Wolfsinger's girlfriend oftentimes made little sense to me, although Wolfsinger himself is an impressively well-developed character. I was also a little surprised to learn that the alien artifact discovered at the very beginning is basically ignored throughout the first half of the novel. The Forge of Mars is a well-written science fiction novel, but it seems to pose a number of provocative questions that it fails to follow up on outside the main focus of the plot, and that fact served to limit the extent of my personal involvement with the story as a whole.
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Title: The Digital Dead by Bruce Balfour ISBN: 0441010849 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Give Us This Mars (As It Is On Mars series) by Thomas William Cronin ISBN: 0968750214 Publisher: Tharsis Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: As It Is On Mars by Thomas William Cronin, Thomas W. Cronin ISBN: 0968750206 Publisher: Tharsis Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Orphans of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix ISBN: 0441010067 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Chindi by Jack McDevitt ISBN: 0441011020 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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