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NASA Trilogy #1
Voyage
The space mission of a lifetime An epic saga of America's might-have-been, Voyage is a powerful, sweeping novel of how, if President Kennedy had lived, we could have sent a manned mission to Mars in the 1980s. Imaginatively created from the true lives and real events., Voyage returns to the geniuses of NASA and the excitement of the Saturn rocket, and includes historical figures from Neil Armstrong to Ronald Reagan who are interwoven with unforgettable characters whose dreams mirror the promise of a young space program that held the world in thrall. There Dana, the Nazi camp survivor who achieves the dream of his hated masters; Gershon, the Vietnam fighter jock determined to be the first African-American to land on another planet; and Natalie York, the brilliant geologist/astronaut who risks a career and love for the chance to run her fingers through the soil of another world.
784 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 1996
259 people are currently reading
3022 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Baxter
403 books2,595 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 165 reviews
February 25, 2014
As a published Science Fiction author with two books out in the market and more on the way, I have made a choice not to review other Science Fiction novels on Goodreads, if only because I don't want there to be any possible perception that I am running down my competition. I make an exception in this case only because the book represents specific acts of intellectual theft--I'm really not reviewing the writer's story telling as much as I am making a comment on his integrity.
My command of the English language pales in the face of what I want to say about this book. There is a truly superlative book about the human drama of the Apollo program called "Apollo: The Race to the Moon" by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox (I've posted a review here on Goodreads). You should read THAT book because, if you do, you will get most of the best stuff in this book, but better written and in its real context. Simply put, this book is largely plagiarized from the Murray/Cox book. And I don't just mean telling similar stories. There are whole passages that Baxter copied almost verbatim.
Look at this:
Here's one example--a quote from page 86 of the paperback edition of Voyage--the character is driving to Langley, Virginia:
"When Jim Dana passed Richmond he turned the Corvette off Route 1 and onto the narrow highway 60 headed southeast. The towns were fewer, and smaller. And, at last, after Williamsburg, there seemed to be nothing but forests and marshland, and the occasional farmhouse."
Here is text beginning beginning on page 9 of the new edition of Apollo describing the car trip of Owen Maynard and his family to Langley, Virginia in 1959:
"The next morning they continued south to Richmond, where they turned off busy Highway 1 onto a narrow two-lane road, State Highway 60 and headed southeast. The towns were fewer now, and smaller. Fifty miles outside Richmond they came to the only sizable town on the route, Williamsburg, and after that it seemed there was nothing but forests and marshland and an occasional farmhouse."
There is much, much more. The image of a flight controller lifting his hand from a flight plan leaving a soaking wet image of his hand, a word for word description of what a spacecraft Contract Acceptance Readiness Review is, words of NASA executive Joe Shea put in the mouth of the fictitious person who held his job in the novel, the description of what the fictitious person did when kicked upstairs to NASA headquarters lifted from Murray/Cox's description of Shea's activities down to key phrases, the description of the deportation of a key engineer on the Saturn V taken from the description of what happened to Arthur Rudolph--again taking not just the events but the words used to describe them, descriptive language that painted a word picture of Langley, the word picture of the Mission Control Center after the last Apollo flight (Apollo 17 in real life, Apollo 14 in the novel) down to the little flags left on the consoles and the gumbo party hosted by MER . . . . I could go on for pages.
I have seen the phrase "sang like a rattlesnake" to describe the behavior of a machine in only two places in my life: in the Murray/Cox description of why two engines of the Apollo 6 second stage shut down early, and why--due to a failure that was identical in almost every respect to the Apollo 6 failure--a nuclear rocket failed in Voyage.
In the discussion of the Mars voyage mission mode in Voyage, one character even echoes a Murray/Cox chapter title (Chapter 9): "What sonofabitch thinks this isn't the right thing to do" or something very close to that.
I challenge anyone to read side by side the parallel sections of Apollo and Voyage and to tell me that Mr. Baxter did not lift whole sentences, key images, colorful and evocative language, quotes, and key ideas. This is not the garden variety accusation of literary plagiarism from non-fiction to fiction that "he stole the idea for this book."
Rather, it is as though Mr. Baxter ingested the whole of Apollo and then regurgitated key portions of it when they fit his narrative.
This is plagiarism, plain and simple. It is an outrage.
And, in case anyone thinks that it is possible that Baxter contacted the authors and obtained permission, it ain't so. I have personally contacted Dr. Charles Murray and he informs me that he has never given permission to Baxter to draw from Apollo, and--further--that he regards this situation as plagiarism.
I'm a Science Fiction novelist, too. And, I used the Murray/Cox book as inspiration for some things in my books--but I used my own words and told my own stories. Not this guy.
This book represents an outrageous example of intellectual theft of the most despicable kind. This book deserves to be regarded with universal scorn and its author should make some sort of amends to Murray and Cox.
My command of the English language pales in the face of what I want to say about this book. There is a truly superlative book about the human drama of the Apollo program called "Apollo: The Race to the Moon" by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox (I've posted a review here on Goodreads). You should read THAT book because, if you do, you will get most of the best stuff in this book, but better written and in its real context. Simply put, this book is largely plagiarized from the Murray/Cox book. And I don't just mean telling similar stories. There are whole passages that Baxter copied almost verbatim.
Look at this:
Here's one example--a quote from page 86 of the paperback edition of Voyage--the character is driving to Langley, Virginia:
"When Jim Dana passed Richmond he turned the Corvette off Route 1 and onto the narrow highway 60 headed southeast. The towns were fewer, and smaller. And, at last, after Williamsburg, there seemed to be nothing but forests and marshland, and the occasional farmhouse."
Here is text beginning beginning on page 9 of the new edition of Apollo describing the car trip of Owen Maynard and his family to Langley, Virginia in 1959:
"The next morning they continued south to Richmond, where they turned off busy Highway 1 onto a narrow two-lane road, State Highway 60 and headed southeast. The towns were fewer now, and smaller. Fifty miles outside Richmond they came to the only sizable town on the route, Williamsburg, and after that it seemed there was nothing but forests and marshland and an occasional farmhouse."
There is much, much more. The image of a flight controller lifting his hand from a flight plan leaving a soaking wet image of his hand, a word for word description of what a spacecraft Contract Acceptance Readiness Review is, words of NASA executive Joe Shea put in the mouth of the fictitious person who held his job in the novel, the description of what the fictitious person did when kicked upstairs to NASA headquarters lifted from Murray/Cox's description of Shea's activities down to key phrases, the description of the deportation of a key engineer on the Saturn V taken from the description of what happened to Arthur Rudolph--again taking not just the events but the words used to describe them, descriptive language that painted a word picture of Langley, the word picture of the Mission Control Center after the last Apollo flight (Apollo 17 in real life, Apollo 14 in the novel) down to the little flags left on the consoles and the gumbo party hosted by MER . . . . I could go on for pages.
I have seen the phrase "sang like a rattlesnake" to describe the behavior of a machine in only two places in my life: in the Murray/Cox description of why two engines of the Apollo 6 second stage shut down early, and why--due to a failure that was identical in almost every respect to the Apollo 6 failure--a nuclear rocket failed in Voyage.
In the discussion of the Mars voyage mission mode in Voyage, one character even echoes a Murray/Cox chapter title (Chapter 9): "What sonofabitch thinks this isn't the right thing to do" or something very close to that.
I challenge anyone to read side by side the parallel sections of Apollo and Voyage and to tell me that Mr. Baxter did not lift whole sentences, key images, colorful and evocative language, quotes, and key ideas. This is not the garden variety accusation of literary plagiarism from non-fiction to fiction that "he stole the idea for this book."
Rather, it is as though Mr. Baxter ingested the whole of Apollo and then regurgitated key portions of it when they fit his narrative.
This is plagiarism, plain and simple. It is an outrage.
And, in case anyone thinks that it is possible that Baxter contacted the authors and obtained permission, it ain't so. I have personally contacted Dr. Charles Murray and he informs me that he has never given permission to Baxter to draw from Apollo, and--further--that he regards this situation as plagiarism.
I'm a Science Fiction novelist, too. And, I used the Murray/Cox book as inspiration for some things in my books--but I used my own words and told my own stories. Not this guy.
This book represents an outrageous example of intellectual theft of the most despicable kind. This book deserves to be regarded with universal scorn and its author should make some sort of amends to Murray and Cox.
January 6, 2013
It is difficult to classify the genre of this novel--but it comes closest to "alternate history". In this story, J.F. Kennedy does not die, and Richard Nixon chooses not to develop the space shuttle program, but instead to launch a manned spacecraft to Mars. The story is jam-packed with engineering and science, peppered with occasional politics. While it focuses on a few characters--primarily NASA's first woman astronaut (a PhD geologist) and a few engineers, the main character is really the engineering process that NASA and its contractors use to develop the spacecraft. Therefore, I highly recommend this book to all engineers, especially system engineers and system integrators. The book could have been shorter; the technical details go on and on. It is without a doubt, the most technically-oriented novel I've ever read--more so than even books by Neal Stephenson. But it gave me a good feeling for the pressures that act on NASA, its astronauts, scientists and engineers, and insight into their worldviews.
February 24, 2013
The seeds to all good literature lies in two words : what if ? Take an occurrence in human history and imagine an alternative outcome to it and voila ! you have material for a good book in your hands. These flights of fantasy are what makes alternative history books some of my favorite reads.
Here is an America where JFK survived the assassination attempt. Shattered and bound to his wheelchair, he urges the space program onward. A world where the Nixon administration did not drop the guillotine on the manned Mars program and finally in 1985, the USA lands a trio of people on Mars. I found this premise very very interesting and Baxter did deliver a colorful roller coaster ride in all of these 600 pages ! Much more than telling the story of three astronauts who go to Mars, the author here focuses on NASA. This then means the focus is on this technological organization and how it tides over many an obstacle in putting men on Mars. The human factor of this novel is quite unmissable and perhaps its biggest strength. With such a backdrop, it would have been easy for the author to slip into technical jargon and give the reader a long technical manual (read Tom Clancy !) and put his characters on the Mars. Baxter however goes the other way. He tells us of the men and women who build the launch vehicles. Those who obsessively pursue this one goal of pushing beyond the envelope of technology, the astronauts who lay down their lives for the bigger goals of technocracy and many more unnamed faces intricately linked with the organization called NASA.The novel spans the story of the first such manned space flight which lands on the red planet and how the mission comes to be. There is jargon yes but the author keeps this to understandable levels and the focus is mainly on people and circumstances. As befits a novel of such scope, the focus is not placed on a few individuals but more on an ensemble cast.
The brightest flash of brilliance in the book is in the character named Joseph Muldoon. He is the equivalent of Edwin Aldrin in real life and perhaps the most pivotal character who drives the story forward. I liked him precisely for his all-American nature and the way he bulldozes his way through all the garbage to get to what matters : completion of the mission. Through the span of this tale careers rise and fall, people come and go and politics keeps poking its fingers in places it has no reason to and all this makes the story a great deal interesting. There is also the story of the three-men crew : Stone, York and Gershon who finally make it to the moon. When I was reaching the end of the book it stuck me quite odd that way back in 1980's it would have been rather impossible for such a crew to break free of the barriers of orthodoxy and prejudice to fly out of Earth orbit. Wondering why ? Read on and find out for I ain't letting the cat out of its bag where its all cozy and comfy !
It took me a long time to finish this book. I couldn't find a logical reason for this as I moved at quite a stiff pace but still the book mocked me with its size of unread pages. The interest level for sci-fi in my reading list is also steadily climbing. Earlier I read up on Asimov and grumbled my way through Heinlein and applauded my way through Clarke but now this book makes me want to read more of sci-fi ! Recommended !
Here is an America where JFK survived the assassination attempt. Shattered and bound to his wheelchair, he urges the space program onward. A world where the Nixon administration did not drop the guillotine on the manned Mars program and finally in 1985, the USA lands a trio of people on Mars. I found this premise very very interesting and Baxter did deliver a colorful roller coaster ride in all of these 600 pages ! Much more than telling the story of three astronauts who go to Mars, the author here focuses on NASA. This then means the focus is on this technological organization and how it tides over many an obstacle in putting men on Mars. The human factor of this novel is quite unmissable and perhaps its biggest strength. With such a backdrop, it would have been easy for the author to slip into technical jargon and give the reader a long technical manual (read Tom Clancy !) and put his characters on the Mars. Baxter however goes the other way. He tells us of the men and women who build the launch vehicles. Those who obsessively pursue this one goal of pushing beyond the envelope of technology, the astronauts who lay down their lives for the bigger goals of technocracy and many more unnamed faces intricately linked with the organization called NASA.The novel spans the story of the first such manned space flight which lands on the red planet and how the mission comes to be. There is jargon yes but the author keeps this to understandable levels and the focus is mainly on people and circumstances. As befits a novel of such scope, the focus is not placed on a few individuals but more on an ensemble cast.
The brightest flash of brilliance in the book is in the character named Joseph Muldoon. He is the equivalent of Edwin Aldrin in real life and perhaps the most pivotal character who drives the story forward. I liked him precisely for his all-American nature and the way he bulldozes his way through all the garbage to get to what matters : completion of the mission. Through the span of this tale careers rise and fall, people come and go and politics keeps poking its fingers in places it has no reason to and all this makes the story a great deal interesting. There is also the story of the three-men crew : Stone, York and Gershon who finally make it to the moon. When I was reaching the end of the book it stuck me quite odd that way back in 1980's it would have been rather impossible for such a crew to break free of the barriers of orthodoxy and prejudice to fly out of Earth orbit. Wondering why ? Read on and find out for I ain't letting the cat out of its bag where its all cozy and comfy !
It took me a long time to finish this book. I couldn't find a logical reason for this as I moved at quite a stiff pace but still the book mocked me with its size of unread pages. The interest level for sci-fi in my reading list is also steadily climbing. Earlier I read up on Asimov and grumbled my way through Heinlein and applauded my way through Clarke but now this book makes me want to read more of sci-fi ! Recommended !
April 3, 2016
Baxter draws on meticulous research to weave a convincing narrative of what would have happened if NASA had attempted to put an astronaut on Mars instead of building the great white elephant that was the Space Shuttle. A fascinating slice of speculative fiction for anyone still pining for the flying cars and moon-bases we were promised.
July 10, 2018
3,7/5
Ο Stephen Baxter μας ταξιδεύει σε ένα παράλληλο σύμπαν στο οποίο οι άνθρωποι προσεδαφίζονται στον Άρη για πρώτη φορά το 1986. Στο βιβλίο βλέπουμε παράλληλα δύο ιστορίες. Η κύρια ιστορία είναι το πως φτάσαμε από την πρώτη προσσελήνωση του 1969 στο να αποφασίσουμε να στείλουμε μια επανδρωμένη αποστολή στον Άρη τόσο σύντομα, και στη δευτερεύουσα ιστορία βλέπουμε το διαστημόπλοιο Ares να ταξιδεύει προς το Άρη.
Ο Baxter αναλύει διεξοδικά κάθε εμπόδιο και κάθε επιλογή, έχοντας χτίσει ένα απόλυτα αληθοφανές περιβάλλον. Βλέπουμε πως πάρθηκε η απόφαση πολιτικά και πως κάθε πρόεδρος της Αμερικής από το 1969 μέχρι το 1985 συνέβαλε σε αυτή, βλέπουμε λεπτομερειακά κάθε τεχνική επιλογή που έγινε για το διαστημόπλοιο και τέλος το πως έφτασε η πρωταγωνίστρια, Natalie York, να είναι η πρώτη γυναίκα αστροναύτης.
Όμως, όλες αυτές οι λεπτομέρειες που έχουν κάνει το βιβλίο να μοιάζει περισσότερο με κομμάτι της ιστορίας μας, το έχουν μετατρέψει επίσης σε ένα συναισθηματικά αποστειρωμένο κείμενο. Παρ΄όλες τις εντάσεις και τις διαφωνίες που υπάρχουν καθ' όλη την αφήγηση δεν υπάρχει συναισθηματική κλιμάκωση πουθενά. Ακόμα και η πιο σημαντική στιγμή, αυτή που η πρώτη γυναίκα αστροναύτης γίνεται και ο πρώτος άνθρωπος που πατάει στον Άρη, είναι τόσο επιστημονικά αναλυτική που γίνεται συναισθηματικά αποφορτισμένη.
Ο Stephen Baxter μας ταξιδεύει σε ένα παράλληλο σύμπαν στο οποίο οι άνθρωποι προσεδαφίζονται στον Άρη για πρώτη φορά το 1986. Στο βιβλίο βλέπουμε παράλληλα δύο ιστορίες. Η κύρια ιστορία είναι το πως φτάσαμε από την πρώτη προσσελήνωση του 1969 στο να αποφασίσουμε να στείλουμε μια επανδρωμένη αποστολή στον Άρη τόσο σύντομα, και στη δευτερεύουσα ιστορία βλέπουμε το διαστημόπλοιο Ares να ταξιδεύει προς το Άρη.
Ο Baxter αναλύει διεξοδικά κάθε εμπόδιο και κάθε επιλογή, έχοντας χτίσει ένα απόλυτα αληθοφανές περιβάλλον. Βλέπουμε πως πάρθηκε η απόφαση πολιτικά και πως κάθε πρόεδρος της Αμερικής από το 1969 μέχρι το 1985 συνέβαλε σε αυτή, βλέπουμε λεπτομερειακά κάθε τεχνική επιλογή που έγινε για το διαστημόπλοιο και τέλος το πως έφτασε η πρωταγωνίστρια, Natalie York, να είναι η πρώτη γυναίκα αστροναύτης.
Όμως, όλες αυτές οι λεπτομέρειες που έχουν κάνει το βιβλίο να μοιάζει περισσότερο με κομμάτι της ιστορίας μας, το έχουν μετατρέψει επίσης σε ένα συναισθηματικά αποστειρωμένο κείμενο. Παρ΄όλες τις εντάσεις και τις διαφωνίες που υπάρχουν καθ' όλη την αφήγηση δεν υπάρχει συναισθηματική κλιμάκωση πουθενά. Ακόμα και η πιο σημαντική στιγμή, αυτή που η πρώτη γυναίκα αστροναύτης γίνεται και ο πρώτος άνθρωπος που πατάει στον Άρη, είναι τόσο επιστημονικά αναλυτική που γίνεται συναισθηματικά αποφορτισμένη.
April 16, 2022
This is an alternate history novel that I enjoyed years ago, with some caveats.
I will immediately digress and admit that my thinking of this book is changing, thanks to H. Honsinger's insightful review, letting us know of Baxter's alleged plagiarism. That allegation, which I believe is well grounded, makes me reluctant to give this the four stars I believed it deserved.
The story evolves from the crucial 'what if?' that is the traditional pivot point for the alternate history novel. In this case, what if President John F. Kennedy survived assassination in 1963, and went on to advocate a Mars project in the 70s and 80s instead of a space shuttle program?
It is a fascinating premise. Although holes could certainly be poked in it, it's still interesting to think about how NASA might have followed the Apollo program with a living JFK. (Personally, I think it's entirely probable that the United States might not have even made it to the moon, assuming JFK survived--a good deal of our "go get 'em" attitude came from trying to honor the memory of a martyred president. Take that away and the Apollo program probably would have died a congressional death, in my opinion.)
My major criticism of the book is that it is largely (I'd say 80%-90%) back story, so the way the book is described is false. The book is marketed as being about the first flight to Mars, but that's not really what you get when you read it. Most of the book is really about the early part of the program leading up to that first flight. The actual passages describing the flight to Mars come across like flash-forwards, and even those parts were unfulfilling. I was itching for the Mars flight, not its origins.
As for the alleged plagiarism, I'll say that when I read the book, around 2002 or 2003, I could see--a little too clearly--that Baxter had read his space history. Several of the in-space incidents are modeled after--and at times very closely after--the real history. I was amazed at Baxter's allegiance to the historical record down to specific detail. At the time, I simply thought it was a lazy way to plot, just regurgitating known facts of actual missions. In my mind, it shouldn't have taken Baxter but a few twists to make those sections his own. I'm well versed in the history, having read dozens of books about the Apollo program in particular, so I could point to numerous occasions where Baxter took specific details of historical missions and wove them into his own story--Apollo 13 and Gemini 8, being just two examples.
And wow, this book is massive at 700+ pages for the mass market paperback. I felt like Pavlov's dog wanting to give up on the test because he wasn't getting enough treats. Lots of setup, hardly any payoff.
Now with that said, I thought the characters were fairly plausible, the plotting wasn't over the top, and many of the scenarios were believable. It wasn't the soap opera type stuff that has frustrated me many times with other Mars novels.
If I had been Baxter's publisher, I would have asked him to do a few things to bring up the prose:
1. Give greater emphasis to the Mars flight, which should be the core story. Relegate the back story to the background, if possible.
2. Make edits to cut the page count down to 500-600 pages.
3. Change up the spaceflight descriptions so they do not closely mirror documented spaceflight events. If I wanted to read descriptions of actual spaceflight events, I don't need to read it in so-called fiction.
Bringing this down to two stars over the plagiarism allegations.
I will immediately digress and admit that my thinking of this book is changing, thanks to H. Honsinger's insightful review, letting us know of Baxter's alleged plagiarism. That allegation, which I believe is well grounded, makes me reluctant to give this the four stars I believed it deserved.
The story evolves from the crucial 'what if?' that is the traditional pivot point for the alternate history novel. In this case, what if President John F. Kennedy survived assassination in 1963, and went on to advocate a Mars project in the 70s and 80s instead of a space shuttle program?
It is a fascinating premise. Although holes could certainly be poked in it, it's still interesting to think about how NASA might have followed the Apollo program with a living JFK. (Personally, I think it's entirely probable that the United States might not have even made it to the moon, assuming JFK survived--a good deal of our "go get 'em" attitude came from trying to honor the memory of a martyred president. Take that away and the Apollo program probably would have died a congressional death, in my opinion.)
My major criticism of the book is that it is largely (I'd say 80%-90%) back story, so the way the book is described is false. The book is marketed as being about the first flight to Mars, but that's not really what you get when you read it. Most of the book is really about the early part of the program leading up to that first flight. The actual passages describing the flight to Mars come across like flash-forwards, and even those parts were unfulfilling. I was itching for the Mars flight, not its origins.
As for the alleged plagiarism, I'll say that when I read the book, around 2002 or 2003, I could see--a little too clearly--that Baxter had read his space history. Several of the in-space incidents are modeled after--and at times very closely after--the real history. I was amazed at Baxter's allegiance to the historical record down to specific detail. At the time, I simply thought it was a lazy way to plot, just regurgitating known facts of actual missions. In my mind, it shouldn't have taken Baxter but a few twists to make those sections his own. I'm well versed in the history, having read dozens of books about the Apollo program in particular, so I could point to numerous occasions where Baxter took specific details of historical missions and wove them into his own story--Apollo 13 and Gemini 8, being just two examples.
And wow, this book is massive at 700+ pages for the mass market paperback. I felt like Pavlov's dog wanting to give up on the test because he wasn't getting enough treats. Lots of setup, hardly any payoff.
Now with that said, I thought the characters were fairly plausible, the plotting wasn't over the top, and many of the scenarios were believable. It wasn't the soap opera type stuff that has frustrated me many times with other Mars novels.
If I had been Baxter's publisher, I would have asked him to do a few things to bring up the prose:
1. Give greater emphasis to the Mars flight, which should be the core story. Relegate the back story to the background, if possible.
2. Make edits to cut the page count down to 500-600 pages.
3. Change up the spaceflight descriptions so they do not closely mirror documented spaceflight events. If I wanted to read descriptions of actual spaceflight events, I don't need to read it in so-called fiction.
Bringing this down to two stars over the plagiarism allegations.
March 27, 2011
Definitely my favorite Baxter. Unlike most Baxter fare, there is no “big thinking”, no Xeelee, no looming destruction of the universe. It is, quite simply, a novel of what might have been (and very nearly was) if NASA had been allowed to continue in the footsteps of Apollo all the way to Mars. It is written in parallel perspectives, looking at the mission itself as it runs its course, and at the preparations, political wangling and engineering that precede it. The heroine, Natalie York, is followed closely as Baxter explores her long personal journey in parallel with the preparations, as it becomes clear to the reader (and to herself) just how much one has to sacrifice to become an astronaut. The quiet geologist becomes an astronaut and an unwilling hero as she reaches for the ultimate prize of both her professions. Despite being fiction, it is in my opinion one of the best portrayals of the culture and politics of NASA during the Apollo and post-Apollo era.
Baxter did in fact apply to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, he was required to speak a foreign language and thus failed to get in. In Voyage, his love of astronautics and space exploration clearly shows. If you liked the movie Apollo 13, you will enjoy this book.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=105
Baxter did in fact apply to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, he was required to speak a foreign language and thus failed to get in. In Voyage, his love of astronautics and space exploration clearly shows. If you liked the movie Apollo 13, you will enjoy this book.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=105
August 19, 2021
It didn't take me 15 months to finish this book, except in the sense that over the course of the last year and a half I kept starting it then putting it down and reading something else that seemed more appealing. It's a fairly gargantuan length account of a parallel universe in which, rather than largely abandoning outer space after landing men on the moon in the late 60s and early 1970s, NASA pressed on to put two men and a woman on Mars.
I don't know if the problem is simply that I'm just not quite enough of a space geek to really enjoy it, but I couldn't help thinking there was a better book that was perhaps half the length lurking somewhere inside this. There are some interesting diversions within its nearly 700 page length. I found the very long and detailed description of how the first ever launch of a manned nuclear-rocket powered spacecraft went horribly and fatally wrong to be a grimly convincing account of how a large number of small errors of judgment and wishful thinking on the part of those tasked with making crucial decisions went terribly wrong. And on occasion, the accounts of how the one female astronaut on the Mars mission, Natalie York was treated by her colleagues and by the media felt as though it could easily have been written at the height of the 'me too' movement in the last couple of years, rather than by a male hard science fiction author back in the first half of the 1990s. Come to that, the culture clash between those who were ex-military and the small minority who had come out of academia was well handled: the book poses the question of whether any such mission is at root about scientific discovery of simply about showing that either NASA, or the USA, or humanity (depending on how you look at it) is capable of doing something really difficult.
What I could have lived without is the sheer level of detailed description of some of the individual rocket launches and so forth that take up much of the first half of the book. At times it felt like reading a very dry, academic account of exactly how something that didn't actually happen, happened. And equally, I think that just a bit too much time is spent recounting conversations between various NASA administrators about budgets and the relative merits of, in particular, the shuttle programme that never happened in this reality and a Mars mission.
That said, some of the best parts of the book are the accounts of the actual mission to Mars itself that are interleaved throughout the book with the story of how it was that the three astronauts ever came to be in a small tin can hurtling across space towards Mars. Baxter did a good job of capturing both how confined such an environment must be to live in for months or even years at a time, and just how far away they are compared to even the moon missions that represent the furthest that humans have ever travelled from the earth in our reality. I know that this is only the first of a trilogy of books, but I couldn't help feeling a little cheated by the fact that only the last thirty pages or so of the book actually involve their being on Mars itself. After all the build-up and speculation about what the surface of Mars might be like, I wanted a bit more of a sense of what it was like for these three astronauts when they actually got there. I also felt that of the three astronauts, only Natalie York really felt like a fully rounded character. Phil Stone never seems to be much more than a cipher and black Vietnam veteran Ralph Gershon is only slightly more fleshed out.
Other points of interest? For all that Baxter is very clearly a keen proponent of manned space exploration, he does give a certain amount of space over to characters who are much more sceptical about it all, who wonder if this should really be a focus for so much money and time when there are other, more pressing problems closer to home. And rather than make them straw-men as he might have been tempted to, you could easily read the book and conclude that he shared their doubts about it.
If you've either got a deep fascination with all things NASA or are a very quick reader, this might be worth picking up, and it is certainly not entirely devoid of positive points, but for me it just felt a bit too much of a slog, something I finished because, dammit, I started it, for me to actually recommend it.
I don't know if the problem is simply that I'm just not quite enough of a space geek to really enjoy it, but I couldn't help thinking there was a better book that was perhaps half the length lurking somewhere inside this. There are some interesting diversions within its nearly 700 page length. I found the very long and detailed description of how the first ever launch of a manned nuclear-rocket powered spacecraft went horribly and fatally wrong to be a grimly convincing account of how a large number of small errors of judgment and wishful thinking on the part of those tasked with making crucial decisions went terribly wrong. And on occasion, the accounts of how the one female astronaut on the Mars mission, Natalie York was treated by her colleagues and by the media felt as though it could easily have been written at the height of the 'me too' movement in the last couple of years, rather than by a male hard science fiction author back in the first half of the 1990s. Come to that, the culture clash between those who were ex-military and the small minority who had come out of academia was well handled: the book poses the question of whether any such mission is at root about scientific discovery of simply about showing that either NASA, or the USA, or humanity (depending on how you look at it) is capable of doing something really difficult.
What I could have lived without is the sheer level of detailed description of some of the individual rocket launches and so forth that take up much of the first half of the book. At times it felt like reading a very dry, academic account of exactly how something that didn't actually happen, happened. And equally, I think that just a bit too much time is spent recounting conversations between various NASA administrators about budgets and the relative merits of, in particular, the shuttle programme that never happened in this reality and a Mars mission.
That said, some of the best parts of the book are the accounts of the actual mission to Mars itself that are interleaved throughout the book with the story of how it was that the three astronauts ever came to be in a small tin can hurtling across space towards Mars. Baxter did a good job of capturing both how confined such an environment must be to live in for months or even years at a time, and just how far away they are compared to even the moon missions that represent the furthest that humans have ever travelled from the earth in our reality. I know that this is only the first of a trilogy of books, but I couldn't help feeling a little cheated by the fact that only the last thirty pages or so of the book actually involve their being on Mars itself. After all the build-up and speculation about what the surface of Mars might be like, I wanted a bit more of a sense of what it was like for these three astronauts when they actually got there. I also felt that of the three astronauts, only Natalie York really felt like a fully rounded character. Phil Stone never seems to be much more than a cipher and black Vietnam veteran Ralph Gershon is only slightly more fleshed out.
Other points of interest? For all that Baxter is very clearly a keen proponent of manned space exploration, he does give a certain amount of space over to characters who are much more sceptical about it all, who wonder if this should really be a focus for so much money and time when there are other, more pressing problems closer to home. And rather than make them straw-men as he might have been tempted to, you could easily read the book and conclude that he shared their doubts about it.
If you've either got a deep fascination with all things NASA or are a very quick reader, this might be worth picking up, and it is certainly not entirely devoid of positive points, but for me it just felt a bit too much of a slog, something I finished because, dammit, I started it, for me to actually recommend it.
December 28, 2024
Overall an amazing, amazing book. Very technically dense. My biggest gripe is that the book spends roughly 700 pages building up to a Mars mission, but only 19 pages actually take place on the surface of Mars. I wish there had been a bit more. But I also acknowledge that the overall point of the book is to show how a theoretical manned Mars mission in 1986 could've been put together in the wake of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. So there was a lot of ground to cover. Still! Would've loved more of the crew actually on Mars.
July 25, 2024
Stephen Baxter is my favorite hard science fiction writer and this book is as hard as science fiction can get. He pushes all my buttons when it comes to science fiction. Baxter has a doctorate in engineering and has taught math and physics and puts his knowledge to good use in the novels he writes. Additionally, for this novel he interviewed NASA engineers and astronauts, researched technical materials related to spacecraft and boosters, viewed launches, and read biographies of key players in the US space program.
Voyage is a stunning, VERY technical work of alternate history science fiction in which President Nixon chooses to pivot from the successful Apollo program to a mission to Mars (Ares mission) rather than his actual decision circa 1972: developing the Space Shuttle program and focusing on unmanned exploration. As a huge fan of the Apollo program growing up I was enthralled with this totally believable alternate timeline – I remember wishing for further human exploration of the solar system as a kid, only to realize that humans were now going to be regulated to low Earth orbit. Who would’ve thunk low Earth orbit would be the limit to human exploration a quarter of the way in to the 21st century though!
One thing Baxter does well in this novel is reminding space exploration fans such as myself the great NASA accomplishments resulting from diverting funds to low Earth orbit projects and unmanned exploration. The Space Shuttle made the International Space Station possible as well as transporting Hubble to the right spot in space, and the unmanned missions have been amazingly successful, including SEVEN successful landings on Mars itself. Other robotic missions which explored or are exploring the solar system are: Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Juno, New Horizons, Deep Impact. Through these missions we’ve photographed and explored the planets and their moons, Pluto, and even comets. In Baxter’s alternate timeline, humans knew very little about the other planets or their moons, and none of the incredible images that we have today existed. But they were going to Mars. While I lamented NASA's decision to abandon deep space human exploration as a kid, I know realize that maybe the right decision was made based on the amazing discoveries made by our robotic explorers. Hopefully the new Artemis program will return humans outside of Earth orbit.
Voyage boasts an extensive cast, led by the main character Natalie York who is a geologist who is admitted to the astronaut program and is chosen to go to Mars because of her extensive knowledge. Two former US Airforce pilot astronauts were also chosen for the mission and we spend a lot of time with them in the preparation for the mission and finally on the way to Mars.
The rest of the cast consists of NASA engineers, NASA contractors, a bunch of astronauts, some scientists, and a cosmonaut. In this reality, NASA develops and tests a nuclear rocket and has two Skylabs instead of our one – one is in lunar orbit (Moonlab) and one in Earth orbit. Also, the Apollo-Soyuz project in this reality is more robust with Americans visiting Salyut stations and the Soviets visiting Moonlab and Skylab.
Baxter explores in great detail the specifics of the space missions undertaken in the book, including the first flight of the first nuclear powered rocket, the Apollo-N. What he describes all seems so very plausible based on the science of the 1970s and 1980s. In the first few pages he includes a diagram of the historic Mars flight as well as a number of images of the different configurations the Ares rocket takes from its flight from Earth to Mars. And despite all the science, he does a nice job fleshing out most of the characters, and we really get to know the three Mars astronauts very well.
In the six-page epilogue, Baxter relates the true history of NASA beginning in 1969 with the incoming Nixon administration and explains the motivations behind their decisions that led us to where we are today rather than where we could very have been. There were a number of NASA officials and politicians in Nixon's ear regarding the future path of NASA. It was fascinating analysis for a space buff such as myself who followed everything NASA did but didn't know the inner workings of the program or who were making key decisions on its future.
I'd recommend this highly to anyone my age who was mesmerized by Apollo missions as a kid and who loves hard science fiction. This is a chunky book and I think this might be too technical and have too much science detail for a casual reader. But I could be wrong.
Voyage is a stunning, VERY technical work of alternate history science fiction in which President Nixon chooses to pivot from the successful Apollo program to a mission to Mars (Ares mission) rather than his actual decision circa 1972: developing the Space Shuttle program and focusing on unmanned exploration. As a huge fan of the Apollo program growing up I was enthralled with this totally believable alternate timeline – I remember wishing for further human exploration of the solar system as a kid, only to realize that humans were now going to be regulated to low Earth orbit. Who would’ve thunk low Earth orbit would be the limit to human exploration a quarter of the way in to the 21st century though!
One thing Baxter does well in this novel is reminding space exploration fans such as myself the great NASA accomplishments resulting from diverting funds to low Earth orbit projects and unmanned exploration. The Space Shuttle made the International Space Station possible as well as transporting Hubble to the right spot in space, and the unmanned missions have been amazingly successful, including SEVEN successful landings on Mars itself. Other robotic missions which explored or are exploring the solar system are: Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Juno, New Horizons, Deep Impact. Through these missions we’ve photographed and explored the planets and their moons, Pluto, and even comets. In Baxter’s alternate timeline, humans knew very little about the other planets or their moons, and none of the incredible images that we have today existed. But they were going to Mars. While I lamented NASA's decision to abandon deep space human exploration as a kid, I know realize that maybe the right decision was made based on the amazing discoveries made by our robotic explorers. Hopefully the new Artemis program will return humans outside of Earth orbit.
Voyage boasts an extensive cast, led by the main character Natalie York who is a geologist who is admitted to the astronaut program and is chosen to go to Mars because of her extensive knowledge. Two former US Airforce pilot astronauts were also chosen for the mission and we spend a lot of time with them in the preparation for the mission and finally on the way to Mars.
The rest of the cast consists of NASA engineers, NASA contractors, a bunch of astronauts, some scientists, and a cosmonaut. In this reality, NASA develops and tests a nuclear rocket and has two Skylabs instead of our one – one is in lunar orbit (Moonlab) and one in Earth orbit. Also, the Apollo-Soyuz project in this reality is more robust with Americans visiting Salyut stations and the Soviets visiting Moonlab and Skylab.
Baxter explores in great detail the specifics of the space missions undertaken in the book, including the first flight of the first nuclear powered rocket, the Apollo-N. What he describes all seems so very plausible based on the science of the 1970s and 1980s. In the first few pages he includes a diagram of the historic Mars flight as well as a number of images of the different configurations the Ares rocket takes from its flight from Earth to Mars. And despite all the science, he does a nice job fleshing out most of the characters, and we really get to know the three Mars astronauts very well.
In the six-page epilogue, Baxter relates the true history of NASA beginning in 1969 with the incoming Nixon administration and explains the motivations behind their decisions that led us to where we are today rather than where we could very have been. There were a number of NASA officials and politicians in Nixon's ear regarding the future path of NASA. It was fascinating analysis for a space buff such as myself who followed everything NASA did but didn't know the inner workings of the program or who were making key decisions on its future.
I'd recommend this highly to anyone my age who was mesmerized by Apollo missions as a kid and who loves hard science fiction. This is a chunky book and I think this might be too technical and have too much science detail for a casual reader. But I could be wrong.
August 5, 2017
In contrast to my experience with Homer Hickam's "Back to the Moon," I quite enjoyed Stephen Baxter's "Voyage." As the subtitle mentions, this is a compelling alternate history of what might have been had a few key events gone differently.
To sum up the main divergences in history without spoiling anything, John F. Kennedy survives the assassination attempt but is rendered an invalid, who publicly twists Richard Nixon's arm during the televised Apollo 11 moonwalk to redirect space exploration toward a manned landing on Mars. All moon landings after Apollo 14 (with the Apollo 15 crew and a rover!) are cancelled; the Saturn hardware repurposed to supporting a Mars initiative; and NASA never builds the Space Shuttle or the Viking Mars landers. We have then a plausible scenario for how NASA could have afforded a push toward a manned Mars landing in the mid-1980s without a massive funding increase.
Baxter gets all the details right without making the book too technically challenging to read. People with a background in space exploration history will find extra enjoyment out of the subtle twists he spins on actual quotes or events. There are even not-so-subtle homages to "our" timeline. The crew of the Mars mission decides on January 28, 1986 to name their landing craft "Challenger." (That was the date the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed.)
Baxter increases dramatic tension via multiple, interwoven timelines. The characters are interesting but sometimes a little flat. Several of them are clearly based on historical figures but are given different names as their characters' stories are divergent from real-life people. For example, Dr. Hans Udet looks very much like Wernher von Braun's assistant Dr. Arthur Rudolph, and an astronaut named Joe Muldoon lands on Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong. Having historical figures intermingled with the fictional ones adds enjoyment, such as hearing John Young and Bob Crippen (the crew of the first space shuttle) act as CAPCOMs during post-Apollo missions that never actually happened.
While we get a chance to sigh at the thoughts of great events that could have been, Baxter is realistic in his assessment of the political realities of NASA and the trade-offs in the decisions that had to be made for this "flag and footprint" missions. Just as the push to land Apollo on the moon left NASA with no funding or coherent and agreed vision for expanding our manned exploration of space after the moon landings, so the hypothetical administrator of NASA in "Voyage" also mortgages the agency's future for a one-shot attempt at a Mars landing. Perhaps space privatization in the hands of visionary entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will someday free us from the politics of making apples-and-oranges funding decisions between NASA and other domestic programs.
This was the first of Baxter's books I have read, and I will be reading more of his works in the future.
Highly recommended for fans of space exploration and alternate history.
To sum up the main divergences in history without spoiling anything, John F. Kennedy survives the assassination attempt but is rendered an invalid, who publicly twists Richard Nixon's arm during the televised Apollo 11 moonwalk to redirect space exploration toward a manned landing on Mars. All moon landings after Apollo 14 (with the Apollo 15 crew and a rover!) are cancelled; the Saturn hardware repurposed to supporting a Mars initiative; and NASA never builds the Space Shuttle or the Viking Mars landers. We have then a plausible scenario for how NASA could have afforded a push toward a manned Mars landing in the mid-1980s without a massive funding increase.
Baxter gets all the details right without making the book too technically challenging to read. People with a background in space exploration history will find extra enjoyment out of the subtle twists he spins on actual quotes or events. There are even not-so-subtle homages to "our" timeline. The crew of the Mars mission decides on January 28, 1986 to name their landing craft "Challenger." (That was the date the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed.)
Baxter increases dramatic tension via multiple, interwoven timelines. The characters are interesting but sometimes a little flat. Several of them are clearly based on historical figures but are given different names as their characters' stories are divergent from real-life people. For example, Dr. Hans Udet looks very much like Wernher von Braun's assistant Dr. Arthur Rudolph, and an astronaut named Joe Muldoon lands on Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong. Having historical figures intermingled with the fictional ones adds enjoyment, such as hearing John Young and Bob Crippen (the crew of the first space shuttle) act as CAPCOMs during post-Apollo missions that never actually happened.
While we get a chance to sigh at the thoughts of great events that could have been, Baxter is realistic in his assessment of the political realities of NASA and the trade-offs in the decisions that had to be made for this "flag and footprint" missions. Just as the push to land Apollo on the moon left NASA with no funding or coherent and agreed vision for expanding our manned exploration of space after the moon landings, so the hypothetical administrator of NASA in "Voyage" also mortgages the agency's future for a one-shot attempt at a Mars landing. Perhaps space privatization in the hands of visionary entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will someday free us from the politics of making apples-and-oranges funding decisions between NASA and other domestic programs.
This was the first of Baxter's books I have read, and I will be reading more of his works in the future.
Highly recommended for fans of space exploration and alternate history.
December 21, 2008
After Apollo 11, a special task force gave Nixon three choices for the future of the space program: robots only, the space shuttle, and Mars. Nixon chose the shuttle; this book is a what-if that imagines the development of human spaceflight if Nixon had chosen Mars instead. There is a great deal of technical detail, which isn't really my thing, but this book also takes a very sophisticated and balanced examination of the complexities of what such a decision might mean. In addition to the dream of Mars, you also get hard looks at the human costs, both for the astronauts and those who sacrifice their families and health in order to keep them flying, surprising consequences for the unmanned space program (ie, little things like the Voyager missions get cut), fascinating accounts of the constant political in-fighting and ruthless battles between those who all want the same thing but disagree about how and why to get there, and a serious consideration of whether or not such Promethean technology does more good than harm.
September 23, 2011
This book blatantly recycles events that happened in the real space program; and literally rips off events and characters wholesale from other books, most notably ANGLE OF ATTACK by Mike Gray. JK Lee is Harrison "Stormy" Storms; right down to the wife who tries to commit suicide by overdosing on meds; or how he keeps the program going by cheating on his time cards.
January 29, 2019
A WONDERFUL look into the fictional world of "What might have been." Too bad mankind is plagued by two curses: Reality and politics. Reality can be managed and reshaped. Politics, however, is the play-demon of the RICH, and will always remain the same. I wish the space program would have taken this path.
June 10, 2017
Kui hea sci-fi kirjanik hakkab kirjutama alternatiivajalugu. Lugu sellest, mis oleks võinud saada, kui Kennedi asemel oleks tol korral kuuli saanud ntx hoopis tema naine? Mis siis, kui sealt edasi oleks Kennedy veelgi enam ja valjuhäälsemalt kosmosevallutust propageerima hakanud? Ja kui paarkümmend aastat jutti oleks suudetud hoida entusiasmi, rahastust ja muud nii, et inimese jalg oleks astunud marsile... Miks mitte 1986?
Raamat algas sellest, et marsimissioonile anti start ning astronaudid tõusid õhku ning lõppes sellega, kui nad viimaks Marsile astusid. Teise, ja hoopis mahukama, liinina aga antakse nende aastate kulg ja pidepunktid, mis jäid Aplollo kuumissiooni ning Challengeri marsimissiooni vahele.
Laotakse puzzle ning tükkhaaval pannakse see veenvaks, veidi tehniliseks maailmaks kokku. Kõndisin eile hommikul lapsel pooleliolevast puzzlest mööda (millegagi tuleb ju viimase arvestustenädala stress suvelõõgastuse vastu vahetada) ja mõistsin, et täpselt selline tunne oli lugedes. :)
Ja mul oli enda pärast piinlik. See oli nii suure töö ja kirega kirjutatud raamat, et ma sain veel korra aru, mille poole oleks tarvis püüelda.
Raamat algas sellest, et marsimissioonile anti start ning astronaudid tõusid õhku ning lõppes sellega, kui nad viimaks Marsile astusid. Teise, ja hoopis mahukama, liinina aga antakse nende aastate kulg ja pidepunktid, mis jäid Aplollo kuumissiooni ning Challengeri marsimissiooni vahele.
Laotakse puzzle ning tükkhaaval pannakse see veenvaks, veidi tehniliseks maailmaks kokku. Kõndisin eile hommikul lapsel pooleliolevast puzzlest mööda (millegagi tuleb ju viimase arvestustenädala stress suvelõõgastuse vastu vahetada) ja mõistsin, et täpselt selline tunne oli lugedes. :)
Ja mul oli enda pärast piinlik. See oli nii suure töö ja kirega kirjutatud raamat, et ma sain veel korra aru, mille poole oleks tarvis püüelda.
July 30, 2019
More of a three and a half, but the pay off and the sheer sense of adventure are a five.
April 13, 2025
Definitely not Science Fiction and I’d rather read historical documentation like “The Right Stuff” ….. Made it to page 250. Maybe I’ll pick it up later.
April 15, 2017
Where would the United States' space program be in the 1980s if President Kennedy had survived the attempted assassination in Dallas two decades earlier? We follow the ambitions and trials of the main character in their quest to travel to outer space. Listened to a dramatization on BBC's iPlayer Radio app.
June 27, 2016
Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.
I have to start this review by saying sorry, if at any point I write Voyager instead of Voyage during this review, it’s because I have Voyager on the brain and literally can’t stop myself from writing that final ‘y’. I’m not even joking, it’s like it’s automatic now. So yeah my apologies.
Voyage is one of those books that take a while to get into. I didn’t truly start enjoying it till nearly 200 pages in. But when I did finally get it, it was like one of those moments where you realise you are in love with a book and it just takes a while for your brain to catch it. It actually got to the point where I wanted to take my time and just enjoy the experience. I think we’re now at the point where this is my favourite book of the year.
Voyage is an alternate history, to be more specific it asks what might have happened to NASA if Kennedy survived the assassination attempt in 1963. In fact you could almost read Voyage as a sequel to 22/11/63 by Stephen King (I will admit I haven’t finished that book yet but I’m assuming it ends with Kennedy not dying). The result of Kennedy not dying is he encourages NASA to continue on after landing a man on the moon and send a mission to Mars.
The thing I love about this is that sending a crew to Mars isn’t easy, and Baxter makes it quite clear how not easy this is. And I don’t mean just the science and technological advancements that need to be made. I mean the whole politics and stuff that happens back on Earth. In fact I would say that the parts of the story which take place on Earth is more fascinating than the parts in space. Because you get to see all the behind the scenes details of what it’s like to work at NASA.
I love that Baxter went into the tiniest details of what would have changed because NASA went to Mars. Even even noted at one point how Gene Roddenberry was working on The Next Generation and decided to go in a whole new direction because of what was happening at NASA (hey any authors reading this, one sure fire way for me to love your book is to mention Star Trek, just saying).
But I think the best thing about this book is the main character. It is a female Geologist who joins NASA to become an astronaut. And this is important because it sort of blew my mind when I realised this book (and it only took my 95% of the book to realise this) is really about all the changes that had to happen as NASA for a female astronaut to become the first human on Mars.
I have read a lot of science-fiction and even now sci-fi is really a male dominated genre and the books are mostly about male protagonists and it was so refreshing to finally find a book about a female scientist. And not just that but it details all the misogyny that she had to overcome to be allowed on that mission. And it wasn’t even like she was put on the mission because she was a female, in fact at one point she is told she won’t be on it specifically because she is a female, but eventually through hard work she gets it and yeah. I liked that.
I want to point out this isn’t a spoiler, in fact you find out very early on that York is put on the mission. The book is just written in a very strange order (and this is one of the things I didn’t like about it), where the story from leaving earth to standing on mars is told at the same time as going from landing on the moon to setting out to Mars. It gets really confusing at some points especially because there are no true chapters which means the story feels like it jumps around quite a bit. It’s still enjoyable but you really need to pay attention. My other complaint about this book is the large number of characters and yet again that may be my fault rather than the books (I’m not good with names).
I have to start this review by saying sorry, if at any point I write Voyager instead of Voyage during this review, it’s because I have Voyager on the brain and literally can’t stop myself from writing that final ‘y’. I’m not even joking, it’s like it’s automatic now. So yeah my apologies.
Voyage is one of those books that take a while to get into. I didn’t truly start enjoying it till nearly 200 pages in. But when I did finally get it, it was like one of those moments where you realise you are in love with a book and it just takes a while for your brain to catch it. It actually got to the point where I wanted to take my time and just enjoy the experience. I think we’re now at the point where this is my favourite book of the year.
Voyage is an alternate history, to be more specific it asks what might have happened to NASA if Kennedy survived the assassination attempt in 1963. In fact you could almost read Voyage as a sequel to 22/11/63 by Stephen King (I will admit I haven’t finished that book yet but I’m assuming it ends with Kennedy not dying). The result of Kennedy not dying is he encourages NASA to continue on after landing a man on the moon and send a mission to Mars.
The thing I love about this is that sending a crew to Mars isn’t easy, and Baxter makes it quite clear how not easy this is. And I don’t mean just the science and technological advancements that need to be made. I mean the whole politics and stuff that happens back on Earth. In fact I would say that the parts of the story which take place on Earth is more fascinating than the parts in space. Because you get to see all the behind the scenes details of what it’s like to work at NASA.
I love that Baxter went into the tiniest details of what would have changed because NASA went to Mars. Even even noted at one point how Gene Roddenberry was working on The Next Generation and decided to go in a whole new direction because of what was happening at NASA (hey any authors reading this, one sure fire way for me to love your book is to mention Star Trek, just saying).
But I think the best thing about this book is the main character. It is a female Geologist who joins NASA to become an astronaut. And this is important because it sort of blew my mind when I realised this book (and it only took my 95% of the book to realise this) is really about all the changes that had to happen as NASA for a female astronaut to become the first human on Mars.
I have read a lot of science-fiction and even now sci-fi is really a male dominated genre and the books are mostly about male protagonists and it was so refreshing to finally find a book about a female scientist. And not just that but it details all the misogyny that she had to overcome to be allowed on that mission. And it wasn’t even like she was put on the mission because she was a female, in fact at one point she is told she won’t be on it specifically because she is a female, but eventually through hard work she gets it and yeah. I liked that.
I want to point out this isn’t a spoiler, in fact you find out very early on that York is put on the mission. The book is just written in a very strange order (and this is one of the things I didn’t like about it), where the story from leaving earth to standing on mars is told at the same time as going from landing on the moon to setting out to Mars. It gets really confusing at some points especially because there are no true chapters which means the story feels like it jumps around quite a bit. It’s still enjoyable but you really need to pay attention. My other complaint about this book is the large number of characters and yet again that may be my fault rather than the books (I’m not good with names).
February 16, 2021
1.5 stars.
The writing is pretty awful, some very clunky sentences in there.
Quite boring, and a slog to get through. I've started skipping whole pages, especially the ones containing 'archived documents' from the government.
The characters are difficult to care about and the one romance so far was telegraphed from miles away, making me think "just get it over with!"
This book feels like it could have been 1/4 or 1/3 of the length and not lost anything.
I'm surprised. I'm sure I've enjoyed other Baxter books but this one is a clunker.
The writing is pretty awful, some very clunky sentences in there.
Quite boring, and a slog to get through. I've started skipping whole pages, especially the ones containing 'archived documents' from the government.
The characters are difficult to care about and the one romance so far was telegraphed from miles away, making me think "just get it over with!"
This book feels like it could have been 1/4 or 1/3 of the length and not lost anything.
I'm surprised. I'm sure I've enjoyed other Baxter books but this one is a clunker.
October 9, 2016
Now what was the point of this?
So, okay, at first I thought the premise really cool: Kennedy survives, woo, such Mars programme, much wow. Thing is, Kennedy's survival changes only the fate of NASA's space programme. Oh, there's no Watergate, for some reason. Ted Kennedy becomes Carter's VP, cool. But that's about it. Oh and, sure, the only other consequence of Kennedy's survival is that it inexplicably replaces some famous people with the author's fictional characters. The afterword explains it, kinda, but I didn't like it.
What's the point?
The point Baxter's trying to make is, perhaps, that a manned Mars mission wouldn't really have achieved anything, we as humanity wouldn't be better off with it. I'm okay with this conclusion. But this point is buried under 600 pages of NASA porn. I can get into NASA porn, but 600 pages of it was a bit too much, really.
What's the point of this book?
Alternate history, I like it. Not the Turtledove shit, though. Turtledove is a horrible writer, his overhyped books are all crap! Methinks. And I'm not into the whole "serious alternate history" thing either, I really prefer a good story over alternate historical correctness anyway. But there is practically no story in Voyage. Don't get me wrong, I love slow, meandering novels to death, but...
On the technical side, we have two timelines, one following the actual mission and another following the buildup of the mission: I understand why it was kind of neccessary, but still a lot of promise was wasted there. We have chapters with different viewpoints, and Baxter does a decent job at making his tone different for his different characters. I'm not sure about his portrayal of women. The characters are somewhat memorable, true, but ultimately shallow. They are not rooted in their world either, which may be part of the book's elusive point ("NASA is detached from reality", which is explicitly mentioned a couple of times).
But what's the point of the whole thing?
Well, it's a good exploration of the "what if we had a Mars programme" concept. The NASA porn is really well thought-out, very realistic, feels very real, that's nice, and I'm sure a lot of NASA allusions and technical trivia went over my head, real NASA geeks must have a field day with this. But are those 600 pages really neccessary for this?
It's a decent light read, if you don't mind the NASA porn. And it did entertain me, I admit, for a long while I really wanted to know what happens next (spoiler: nothing much). But I'd suggest you to just go read some nonfiction account of the actual space programme. That story is better, and you may learn something.
So, okay, at first I thought the premise really cool: Kennedy survives, woo, such Mars programme, much wow. Thing is, Kennedy's survival changes only the fate of NASA's space programme. Oh, there's no Watergate, for some reason. Ted Kennedy becomes Carter's VP, cool. But that's about it. Oh and, sure, the only other consequence of Kennedy's survival is that it inexplicably replaces some famous people with the author's fictional characters. The afterword explains it, kinda, but I didn't like it.
What's the point?
The point Baxter's trying to make is, perhaps, that a manned Mars mission wouldn't really have achieved anything, we as humanity wouldn't be better off with it. I'm okay with this conclusion. But this point is buried under 600 pages of NASA porn. I can get into NASA porn, but 600 pages of it was a bit too much, really.
What's the point of this book?
Alternate history, I like it. Not the Turtledove shit, though. Turtledove is a horrible writer, his overhyped books are all crap! Methinks. And I'm not into the whole "serious alternate history" thing either, I really prefer a good story over alternate historical correctness anyway. But there is practically no story in Voyage. Don't get me wrong, I love slow, meandering novels to death, but...
On the technical side, we have two timelines, one following the actual mission and another following the buildup of the mission: I understand why it was kind of neccessary, but still a lot of promise was wasted there. We have chapters with different viewpoints, and Baxter does a decent job at making his tone different for his different characters. I'm not sure about his portrayal of women. The characters are somewhat memorable, true, but ultimately shallow. They are not rooted in their world either, which may be part of the book's elusive point ("NASA is detached from reality", which is explicitly mentioned a couple of times).
But what's the point of the whole thing?
Well, it's a good exploration of the "what if we had a Mars programme" concept. The NASA porn is really well thought-out, very realistic, feels very real, that's nice, and I'm sure a lot of NASA allusions and technical trivia went over my head, real NASA geeks must have a field day with this. But are those 600 pages really neccessary for this?
It's a decent light read, if you don't mind the NASA porn. And it did entertain me, I admit, for a long while I really wanted to know what happens next (spoiler: nothing much). But I'd suggest you to just go read some nonfiction account of the actual space programme. That story is better, and you may learn something.
March 21, 2015
It seems particularly appropriate this week during the 30th Anniversary of the moon landing that I’m reviewing this particular book. Voyage is an alternative history exploring what might have happened if, following the moon landings, instead of developing the Space Shuttle, NASA had concentrated its resources to landing a man on Mars.
The book starts when Neil Armstrong stands on the moon and finishes in the 80s when NASA sends a mission to Mars.
The result is a fascinating but flawed look into what might have been. Baxter has obviously done a prodigious amount of research into NASA. Reading this book you learn a lot about the culture, language and details of space exploration.
Unfortunately it is these very details which work against the book as a story. You probably won’t be surprised to discover that astronauts use a lot of acronyms. In keeping with the realistic tone of the book, so does Baxter. Which means he has to explain them all to us.
All the description and explanation slows the actual story down to a crawl. While I found the details of the space flights and training very interesting, I didn’t really connect with any of the characters in the book till around the half way mark.
This is a shame since once I had made that connection (created by a specific traumatic event) I found that the story picked up pace and became much more gripping to read.
A second problem is the sheer number of characters in this book. Covering 2 decades as it does, it flits between many viewpoints never giving you very long to learn about any individual character, apart from the one central character who I found to be intensely whiney and annoying.
Despite these flaws I still think this is an amazing book and well worth reading. It does an excellent job of showing the sheer scale of difficulty that is involved in putting man on any other planet. Baxter also debates the wisdom of such stunt missions or indeed space travel at all, letting each side put forward their arguments without heavy bias.
The book starts when Neil Armstrong stands on the moon and finishes in the 80s when NASA sends a mission to Mars.
The result is a fascinating but flawed look into what might have been. Baxter has obviously done a prodigious amount of research into NASA. Reading this book you learn a lot about the culture, language and details of space exploration.
Unfortunately it is these very details which work against the book as a story. You probably won’t be surprised to discover that astronauts use a lot of acronyms. In keeping with the realistic tone of the book, so does Baxter. Which means he has to explain them all to us.
All the description and explanation slows the actual story down to a crawl. While I found the details of the space flights and training very interesting, I didn’t really connect with any of the characters in the book till around the half way mark.
This is a shame since once I had made that connection (created by a specific traumatic event) I found that the story picked up pace and became much more gripping to read.
A second problem is the sheer number of characters in this book. Covering 2 decades as it does, it flits between many viewpoints never giving you very long to learn about any individual character, apart from the one central character who I found to be intensely whiney and annoying.
Despite these flaws I still think this is an amazing book and well worth reading. It does an excellent job of showing the sheer scale of difficulty that is involved in putting man on any other planet. Baxter also debates the wisdom of such stunt missions or indeed space travel at all, letting each side put forward their arguments without heavy bias.
August 26, 2024
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL ON A JOURNEY TO MARS
NASA has dreamed of sending astronauts to Mars for at least the past six decades. For a time in the late 1960s and early ’70s, agency officials advanced plans to do just that once the Apollo program had wound down. Those plans faltered, of course, foiled by political and budgetary pressures on the Nixon Administration, which was still waging war in Vietnam. But the English science fiction author Stephen Baxter imagines things turned out differently in his extraordinary doorstopper novel, Voyage, about a fictional mission to Mars. His what-if version of history assumes that JFK survived the assassin’s bullets in 1963 and successfully lobbied from his wheelchair for the Mars mission, overshadowing President Nixon. It’s a plausible argument, and Baxter makes the most of it in this intimate, step-by-step account of the politics, the engineering hurdles, and the human drama of the mission itself.
A LONG, COMPLEX STORY WITH A WOMAN AT ITS HEART
Throughout the nearly eight hundred pages of the novel, we follow the career of astronaut Natalie York. At the outset we meet her at the launch of the Ares spacecraft headed out on an eighteen-month mission to Mars. York is the mission specialist in a crew of three. She is the world’s reigning expert on the geology of the Red Planet. Then we cut to her backstory, which we observe in short chapters alternating with progressive scenes in space as Ares makes its way to Mars.
As York’s story unfolds, we meet the two men with her on the mission, Commander Phil Stone, formerly a US Air Force test pilot who was the last to fly the X-15 experimental aircraft, and Ralph Gershon, who had flown a USAF fighter-bomber in the Nixon Administration’s illegal incursion into Cambodia. Gershon is African American and thus widely viewed as an outsider in the astronaut corps, like York.
Early on in the story we also meet the men behind the scenes at NASA and its suppliers who carry the torch for manned spaceflight. It’s they who design and build the massive machines that will carry York, Stone, and Gershon to Mars. They’re all there: the early astronauts, the engineers, the NASA administrators, the politicians, and the astronauts’ families. Voyage offers a panoramic view of the space program, and it’s solidly grounded in reality despite Baxter’s flight of fantasy about the history.
A FEAST FOR SPACE ENTHUSIASTS
What stands out above all in Voyage is Baxter’s care in grounding his story in the science and technology of the time. At every stage of Ares‘ development, and throughout York’s mission to Mars, he explains in detail how things work. And there is a great deal to explain. After all, the Saturn V rocket that boosts Ares on its way to the Red Planet contains an astounding 5.6 million parts—and every single one of them needs to work, or the mission might be in trouble. When things go wrong, as inevitably they do, Baxter shows exactly how the resourceful crew manages workarounds.
Elsewhere in print in other novels, as well as in nonfiction accounts, in film, and on television, I’ve come across other explanations of how things might work in space. But Voyage is an outlier in Baxter’s celebration of the brilliance of the engineering that makes spaceflight possible. It’s a veritable feast for any space enthusiast.
WHY SHOULD WE SEND A MANNED MISSION TO MARS?
For as long as I can remember—and I’ve been following developments since Sputnik I in 1957—aerospace engineers and science fiction writers alike have fantasized about traveling to Mars. It’s not too much to call it an obsession. And not just in the United States. Of the forty-seven Mars missions from October 10, 1960, to October 23, 2023, nineteen were launched by the Soviet Union or its successor state, Russia. And China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and the European Union have all gotten into the game as well. Of course, none of these missions were manned. But many of those who sent them on their way no doubt harbored hopes that they presaged efforts to send people to the Red Planet. The obsession lingers.
But a substantial majority of the scientific community, and many in the space industry, believe that far more interesting targets lie elsewhere in the Solar System. Some regard the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter as the most compelling objective. The potential for asteroid mining is boundless. Untold riches in essential materials, from water to heavy metals, lie there to be tapped as Earth’s own resources play out. But scientists focus on the search for evidence that the stirrings of life might have evolved elsewhere than on Earth.
WHERE MIGHT THERE BE EVIDENCE OF LIFE?
In fact, there is considerable speculation that reservoirs of liquid water exist under the surface of Mars. Some believe that water may harbor evidence of microscopic life. But most space scientists are convinced that the best prospects for finding evidence of life in the Solar System lies under the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt and some of the larger of the 257 moons of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. The most frequently mentioned potential targets are these:
Jupiter: Io, Calisto, Ganymede, Europa
Saturn: Enceladus, Titan
Neptune: Triton
NASA and the space agencies of other countries have, in fact, sent fly-by missions past every one of these targets in recent years. And in 2005, on a mission called Cassini, NASA landed the Huygens Probe on Titan, the only moon in the Solar System to possess an atmosphere. And on October 10, 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper on a mission to Europa. It’s scheduled to enter Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2030.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Baxter is the author of sixty-two science fiction novels and three collections of short fiction. He has won a long list of awards for his writing. Baxter was born in 1951 in Liverpool, England. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southampton, and an MBA from Henley Management College. A chartered engineer, he has been a full-time author since 1995.
NASA has dreamed of sending astronauts to Mars for at least the past six decades. For a time in the late 1960s and early ’70s, agency officials advanced plans to do just that once the Apollo program had wound down. Those plans faltered, of course, foiled by political and budgetary pressures on the Nixon Administration, which was still waging war in Vietnam. But the English science fiction author Stephen Baxter imagines things turned out differently in his extraordinary doorstopper novel, Voyage, about a fictional mission to Mars. His what-if version of history assumes that JFK survived the assassin’s bullets in 1963 and successfully lobbied from his wheelchair for the Mars mission, overshadowing President Nixon. It’s a plausible argument, and Baxter makes the most of it in this intimate, step-by-step account of the politics, the engineering hurdles, and the human drama of the mission itself.
A LONG, COMPLEX STORY WITH A WOMAN AT ITS HEART
Throughout the nearly eight hundred pages of the novel, we follow the career of astronaut Natalie York. At the outset we meet her at the launch of the Ares spacecraft headed out on an eighteen-month mission to Mars. York is the mission specialist in a crew of three. She is the world’s reigning expert on the geology of the Red Planet. Then we cut to her backstory, which we observe in short chapters alternating with progressive scenes in space as Ares makes its way to Mars.
As York’s story unfolds, we meet the two men with her on the mission, Commander Phil Stone, formerly a US Air Force test pilot who was the last to fly the X-15 experimental aircraft, and Ralph Gershon, who had flown a USAF fighter-bomber in the Nixon Administration’s illegal incursion into Cambodia. Gershon is African American and thus widely viewed as an outsider in the astronaut corps, like York.
Early on in the story we also meet the men behind the scenes at NASA and its suppliers who carry the torch for manned spaceflight. It’s they who design and build the massive machines that will carry York, Stone, and Gershon to Mars. They’re all there: the early astronauts, the engineers, the NASA administrators, the politicians, and the astronauts’ families. Voyage offers a panoramic view of the space program, and it’s solidly grounded in reality despite Baxter’s flight of fantasy about the history.
A FEAST FOR SPACE ENTHUSIASTS
What stands out above all in Voyage is Baxter’s care in grounding his story in the science and technology of the time. At every stage of Ares‘ development, and throughout York’s mission to Mars, he explains in detail how things work. And there is a great deal to explain. After all, the Saturn V rocket that boosts Ares on its way to the Red Planet contains an astounding 5.6 million parts—and every single one of them needs to work, or the mission might be in trouble. When things go wrong, as inevitably they do, Baxter shows exactly how the resourceful crew manages workarounds.
Elsewhere in print in other novels, as well as in nonfiction accounts, in film, and on television, I’ve come across other explanations of how things might work in space. But Voyage is an outlier in Baxter’s celebration of the brilliance of the engineering that makes spaceflight possible. It’s a veritable feast for any space enthusiast.
WHY SHOULD WE SEND A MANNED MISSION TO MARS?
For as long as I can remember—and I’ve been following developments since Sputnik I in 1957—aerospace engineers and science fiction writers alike have fantasized about traveling to Mars. It’s not too much to call it an obsession. And not just in the United States. Of the forty-seven Mars missions from October 10, 1960, to October 23, 2023, nineteen were launched by the Soviet Union or its successor state, Russia. And China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and the European Union have all gotten into the game as well. Of course, none of these missions were manned. But many of those who sent them on their way no doubt harbored hopes that they presaged efforts to send people to the Red Planet. The obsession lingers.
But a substantial majority of the scientific community, and many in the space industry, believe that far more interesting targets lie elsewhere in the Solar System. Some regard the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter as the most compelling objective. The potential for asteroid mining is boundless. Untold riches in essential materials, from water to heavy metals, lie there to be tapped as Earth’s own resources play out. But scientists focus on the search for evidence that the stirrings of life might have evolved elsewhere than on Earth.
WHERE MIGHT THERE BE EVIDENCE OF LIFE?
In fact, there is considerable speculation that reservoirs of liquid water exist under the surface of Mars. Some believe that water may harbor evidence of microscopic life. But most space scientists are convinced that the best prospects for finding evidence of life in the Solar System lies under the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt and some of the larger of the 257 moons of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. The most frequently mentioned potential targets are these:
Jupiter: Io, Calisto, Ganymede, Europa
Saturn: Enceladus, Titan
Neptune: Triton
NASA and the space agencies of other countries have, in fact, sent fly-by missions past every one of these targets in recent years. And in 2005, on a mission called Cassini, NASA landed the Huygens Probe on Titan, the only moon in the Solar System to possess an atmosphere. And on October 10, 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper on a mission to Europa. It’s scheduled to enter Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2030.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Baxter is the author of sixty-two science fiction novels and three collections of short fiction. He has won a long list of awards for his writing. Baxter was born in 1951 in Liverpool, England. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southampton, and an MBA from Henley Management College. A chartered engineer, he has been a full-time author since 1995.
March 31, 2013
This is a great novel. The only reason I give it 4 stars and not 5 is because of how technical it is. That's interesting by virtue of the alternate but very plausible spacecraft developed in this timeline of reaching Mars. Unfortunately, those details can slow down the narrative a bit in places.
SPOILER:
Although I loved the space shuttle program, I agree with the author that his alternate timeline would have been preferable. It would have been worth it, to me, to have given up that program in order to have reached Mars in the 1980s. Who knows what we would have accomplished by now, nearly 30 years later and about 15 years after Baxter published the book. America an the world simply must be bolder. I'm grateful for the rovers, but having humans on Mars should have already happened by now.
SPOILER:
Although I loved the space shuttle program, I agree with the author that his alternate timeline would have been preferable. It would have been worth it, to me, to have given up that program in order to have reached Mars in the 1980s. Who knows what we would have accomplished by now, nearly 30 years later and about 15 years after Baxter published the book. America an the world simply must be bolder. I'm grateful for the rovers, but having humans on Mars should have already happened by now.
September 10, 2020
This was for the BBC Radio show production version. Very enjoyable with the full cast and great voice actors.
April 5, 2012
In this realistic novel, Baxter puts forward a compelling alternate history in which Nixon chooses Mars instead of the space shuttle. Spurred on by JFK, who is only wounded in the assasination attempt in 1963, the book explores the possible politics, decision points, engineering, and human challenges that could have happened, and would have seen men land on Mars as early as 1986.
Although this is alternate history, Baxter has got the right tone and mix of story elements to nearly convince you that you've picked up a sequel to The Right Stuff. Very well done.
Although this is alternate history, Baxter has got the right tone and mix of story elements to nearly convince you that you've picked up a sequel to The Right Stuff. Very well done.
March 1, 2012
Baxter's alternate history tale of a manned mission to Mars is interesting but reads somewhat dry. Much of the book is told from the point of view of Natalie York who becomes (in this alternate history) America's first woman in space along with the first person to set foot on Mars.
It's an interesting book and tries to look at both the benefits and disadvantages to the space program if Nasa had proceeded down that path. Worth reading but a little depressing given that in the 16 years since it's publication, the space shuttle has been retired and our manned spaceflight program is all but non-existant.
It's an interesting book and tries to look at both the benefits and disadvantages to the space program if Nasa had proceeded down that path. Worth reading but a little depressing given that in the 16 years since it's publication, the space shuttle has been retired and our manned spaceflight program is all but non-existant.
September 11, 2012
I can't even classify this as Science Fiction... this is Engineering Fiction. Eng-Fi, is that a thing? It should be.
Anyway, I ate it up: an alt-history take on how the US might've gotten to Mars in the 80s if it had taken that direction right after Apollo, instead of the Shuttle and Space Station and Hubble and the variety of planetary probes we've built instead. And Baxter doesn't sell this as a unequivocally better direction, either -- the story's not that simple-minded, not at all.
Also, space geeks might enjoy this animation of the proposed vehicle methodology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbvM5...
Anyway, I ate it up: an alt-history take on how the US might've gotten to Mars in the 80s if it had taken that direction right after Apollo, instead of the Shuttle and Space Station and Hubble and the variety of planetary probes we've built instead. And Baxter doesn't sell this as a unequivocally better direction, either -- the story's not that simple-minded, not at all.
Also, space geeks might enjoy this animation of the proposed vehicle methodology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbvM5...
September 25, 2019
Un roman impressionnant sur la préparation d'une mission spatiale à destination de Mars dans une Amérique fictive où Kennedy a survécu à l'attentat. Le récit est très réaliste et documenté; sans doute que de nombreux faits relatifs au programme Apollo ont été utilisés à cet effet. Contrairement à ce que le titre suggère, le roman parle très peu du voyage en soit, mais presque exclusivement de sa préparation.
Ce n'est pas un roman grand public. Il ne passionnera que les personnes réellement intéressées par le sujet. Ceux-là ne devraient pas être déçus.
Ce n'est pas un roman grand public. Il ne passionnera que les personnes réellement intéressées par le sujet. Ceux-là ne devraient pas être déçus.
January 25, 2010
An execrable confection. Baxter "reinvents" history but it simply isn't all that plausible outside of space hardware. He shamelessly steals plot material, both retelling the better known incidents from Project Apollo and ripping off Arthur Clarke's breathless PC nothings from "2010". And he populates the pages with exceptionally foul mouthed people who are little better than cartoon cutouts. Not recommended.
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