Marsbound

I picked up Joe Haldeman’s Marsbound based on reputation alone. Recipient of both Hugo and Nebula sci-fi awards, and twice President of the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers of America, Joe has quite a list of credentials. Marsbound is a perfect example that reputation is not everything!

By Joe Haldeman, 2008

2 Stars

Synopsis

Carmen Dula, her brother Card, and parents, migrate to Mars with several other lucky lottery winners. After almost killing herself on the surface she is miraculously rescued by an unknown alien species who have apparently lived on Mars undetected for millenia. Another novel of man’s first contact with an alien species.

Take home message

The story feels like a modern retelling of H.G. Well’s Man On The Moon, only with crappy, uninteresting characters, and an unhealthy focus on Carmen’s 18-year-old virginity and subsequent sex life. Haldeman well captures the perspective and thoughts of a teenage girl, but his sexualizing of the protagonist leads me to wonder if he has had a teenage daughter, was heavily into teen-porn, or both. Not entertaining.

The highlight of the book was conceptual: how would an extremely wise and capable alien intelligence choose to make itself manifest to a faster-paced, emotionally troubled species like man? His use of multiple levels of engineered intermediates is novel. The story would have been infinitely more interesting if this was more developed throughout the novel, instead of a flash of insight at the end of the novel.

I will not be reading Haldeman’s works again.