- Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; First Edition edition (May 15 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812566785
- ISBN-13: 978-0812566789
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 12.3 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,669,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
According to Larry Niven, time travel is logically impossible--sheer fantasy. So when time-agent Svetz heads back from polluted future Earth in search of extinct animals, he tends to sideslip into fantastic, fictional worlds. In short stories collected in The Flight of the Horse (1973), his quests for a horse, a Gila monster, and a whale unearthed a unicorn, a dragon, and Moby-Dick. Less comic but equally daft, Rainbow Mars combines both space and time travel to explore Mars in the deep past, before it was a dead world. Naturally it's populated by a menagerie of warring fictional Martians from Edgar Rice Burroughs (multi-armed sword-wielders), H.G. Wells (tentacles and heat rays), and less familiar authors. Svetz and companions are soon in big trouble. Complications include a gigantic alien tree extending into Mars's orbit--an organic version of the space elevator in Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise. One of these useful "beanstalks" on Earth seems a highly desirable facility, but there are hidden drawbacks, and most of the multiplying timelines lead to disaster. This is fun for experienced SF readers who can follow the in-jokes and the switchback ride through tangled alternative histories. The earlier, even funnier Svetz stories are included as a bonus. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Time, space and a reader's patience become vertiginously distorted in this dizzying compilation of six linked tales written over a 30-year time span by Niven (Destiny's Road, etc.), winner of five Hugo Awards. Five short stories written between 1969 and 1973 follow the title novella (copyrighted 1999) but relate events predating its Martian adventures of Niven's klutzy time-traveler hero, Hanville Svetz, as he scours previous centuries for animals extinct in his environmentally devastated 2300 A.D. Earth. When Svetz's Institute for Temporal Research is transferred to the Bureau for Sky Domains, the resulting power struggle launches Svetz into Mars's inhabited past, accompanied by two lissome, stretch-suited astronauts, Zeera and Miya, on a mission to save Earth from Mars's dried-up fate and to colonize the solar system. After surviving Miya's lusty libido and multitudinous hokey alien monsters, Svetz solves one of the chief mysteries of Niven's universe, that of the Beanstalk stretching from earth to the heavens. Occasional satiric sparks light up Svetz's perils, but internal consistency is weak, while a generally gluey pace retards Niven's intended flights of imagination.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
390 Atomic Era. Svetz was nearly home, but the snake was waking up. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
390 Atomic Era. Svetz was nearly home, but the snake was waking up. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Mixture of Old (Wonderful) and New (Lackluster),
By A Customer
This review is from: Rainbow Mars (Mass Market Paperback)
Larry Niven has written some wonderful books featuring some of the best ideas in science fiction. This book is half-and-half. The wonderful part contains a handful of delightful short stories from his 1976 book "Flight of the Horse," now sadly out of print. The not-so-wonderful is an almost unreadable new novella set in the same universe. Mars is popular these days, and Niven should have been able to do a smash-bang job of working it into the "Horse" universe. Instead, he wrote a lot of dismal dialog and murky exposition with none of the life of the older stories (which I eagerly reread, confirming that they've stood the test of time).I could give this a mixed review: a compromise between five stars for the old material, and one star for the new. But save your money and look for a used copy of "Flight of the Horse." And shame on Niven's publisher for not just reissuing a great older book and leaving well enough alone.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poor,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rainbow Mars (Hardcover)
This is actually a fantasy book disguised as SF. That, of itself, isn't a bad thing. But Niven's writing style is very disjointed and erratic; it has none of the polish that his novels with Jerry Pournelle (and Steve Barnes) have. It's as if Niven is writing with a wink and a nod to his huge fan base--the wink being for "in" jokes and a nod given to the hard-core fan who understands what he's writing about. He writes in such a way as to leave things out, such as transitional phrases or descriptions, assuming (I think) that the reader will fill in the rest. This was an awful book in a great package. Tor seems to be doing this lately: great packages for lousy novels (Card is one, Williamson is another).
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible,
By Alan J. Schweickhardt (Mt. Pleasant, SC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rainbow Mars (School & Library Binding)
I am a Larry Niven fan and liked most of his books. (Integral Trees was mediocre, but I finished.) However, I gave up on this book pretty soon, and I almost never give up on a book before finishing. I returned it to the library after I started the very confusing time/space (?) travel to Mars (?) chapter. Maybe I should have followed some of the other reviewers advise and read the short stories first so I could understand what was going on. The dialoge was trite and unbelievable. Even for science fiction/fantasy, none of the concepts made any sense.I consider myself even dumber for having wasted 1/2 hour on starting this book.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
