Red Thunder

John Varley's book is pretty recent (2003), and thus somewhat relevant to the hullabaloo about going to Mars. Yep, that tried and true formula - mixed with the other tried and true formula about a gang of misfits coming up with a supremely elegant solution, with a dash of the impossible new technology that's as obvious as the nose on your face, so long as you look at it differently.

From that less than enthusiastic intro, it sounds like the book's not all that good. It's actually alright. It's a good read, at least - the characters develop well, the plot isn't too simplistic, and it touches enough current issues (for the U.S., anyway) including racism and commercialism, to achieve verisimilitude. In fact, the book is real enough (except for the impossible-by-today's-science technology) that it could be science-maybe-not-fiction.

The ending kind of fizzled, though, but that's a common complaint of mine - the book rolls along fine, then it seems that we get up to a page marker, and all the pieces drop into place, and all the loose threads are allocated a paragraph, and the book's done with enough room for the advertising page at the end.

A nice, 400 page, one-day read.