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Rainbow Mars
Time travelers visit an ancient Mars filled with Burroughs aliens and a beanstalk
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Rainbow Mars
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By Larry Niven
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Tor Books
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$24.95/$34.95 Canada
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Hardcover, March 1999
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ISBN 0-312-86777-8
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Review by D. Douglas Fratz
 t's 1100 years in the future, a time when most of humanity leads a miserable, impoverished existence on a polluted, overpopulated Earth. The planet is ruled by a United Nations monarchy of inbred imbeciles and is virtually devoid of non-human life. The surviving humans have adapted to breathe an atmosphere so polluted it would kill anyone from today's world instantly.
In this world, Hanville Svetz works for the Institute for Temporal Research, which has humanity's only time machines. His job has been to retrieve extinct animals--ranging from dogs to whales--at the whim of the current mentally-challenged monarch. But he has often inadvertently returned with mythical beasts instead, such as unicorns and dragons. When the old monarch dies, the new, slightly smarter, monarch wants space aliens.
Fortunately, bureaucrats have continued a rudimentary space program, which is joined with the time program to allow Svetz and a female astronaut to travel to ancient Mars to search for the aliens that built the canals that--according to fragmentary surviving records--were observed on Mars by early human astronomers. On ancient Mars, they do indeed find at least five races of intelligent Martians and a Red Planet that has water, an atmosphere and an additional surprise: a huge tree that grows from the surface of Mars into space, with hordes of fighting Martians living along its vertical surface.
After several skirmishes, Svetz and his partners find seeds to the alien tree. They then move forward through time to see what happens to the Martian beanstalk, watching as it detaches from Mars and travels to Earth--with Martians still living on it--where it begins to grow. They move forward to their future and find their world in worse shape than before. Svetz must now mount a joint human/Martian mission to destroy the tree in the past before it has devastated both Mars and Earth.
A farcical homage to classic SF
Rainbow Mars varies markedly from the hard science fiction that readers have come to expect from Larry Niven. It is a confusing mix of farce and hard SF adventure that pays homage to the classic Martian adventures of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and others, expanded from a series of Niven's own short stories published in the late '60s and early '70s.
The novel is extremely imaginative and has at least one excellent hard SF idea, the beanstalk--or world tree--an interstellar alien life form that extracts water and other essential elements from planetary biospheres. That idea alone could form the nucleus of a good SF novel. But the narrative of Rainbow Mars is seldom compelling, and characterization is virtually nonexistent. Details seem haphazardly chosen, without serious research or thought. The most perplexing problem with the book is an inexplicable structural flaw: The five short stories that introduce Svetz and his early time-traveling adventures are placed at the end of the book, after his later Martian adventure, instead of at the start, where they logically belong.
All of this combines to make Rainbow Mars a mixture that, unfortunately, never gels into a coherent whole. Niven has done much better in the past, and readers can only hope that he will do so again.
I guess that even power hitters like Larry Niven can't hit home runs every time.
-- Doug
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How To Save The World
If religion were a disease, would you take the cure?
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How To Save The World
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Edited by Charles Sheffield
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Tor Books
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$14.95/$21.00 Canada
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Trade Paperback, Feb. 1999
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ISBN 0-312-86784-0
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Review by David A. Truesdale
 rimming with inventiveness and a no-holds-barred approach to solving some of Earth's perennial problems, How to Save the World contains 13 "idea" stories that challenge many a sacred cow. They will irritate, provoke and make readers question certain cherished beliefs.
A trio of stories are indicative of what is to be found here. Jerry Oltion's "My Soul to Keep" posits a future America where religion is considered a proven and curable disease, and is recognized as such by the American Medical Association. When the pope visits America incognito, he is quarantined as the prime carrier of a possible religious plague. A subtle homage to 1984 informs the frightening conclusion.
"Zap Thy Neighbor" is James P. Hogan's solution to the aggressive, homicidal tendencies inherent in everyone that, with increasing regularity, are allowed to surface in today's world of the drive-by shooting. What if everyone were able to instantly kill anyone who irritated them, via remote-controlled devices implanted at birth? Wouldn't people be inclined, therefore, to be nicer to their neighbors for fear of angering them? Hogan's insight into human psychology leads to a surprisingly fitting conclusion as the tables are turned on those who fail to curb their violent tendencies.
Race relations, rapists, and intolerance are tackled in "The Meetings of the Secret World Masters," where Geoffrey A. Landis tells the chilling story of graduate biology students who tailor specific viruses to eradicate certain social ills (such as changing the skin color of whites to black, and vice versa), and what such power in the hands of a few has the potential to do. Think of a "Star Chamber" scenario with a high-tech twist and worldwide consequences.
Overpopulation, nano-magic and illiteracy
Though a variety of societal ills are addressed and solved to varying degrees of success in this collection, one of the more intriguing stories is Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Choice," easily the most character-oriented of all the tales. Arlan Andrews' clever "Souls On Ice"--where the long-term ramifications of premature mass cryogenic storage in an overpopulated world would seem to solve the near-term space problem--is also a highlight. And Brenda Clough--with tongue firmly in cheek--examines the very process of problem-solving itself, as those attempting to solve world ills become slaves to an overdose of politically correct compromise in the satiric "The Product of the Extremes." The final and longest piece in the book, "Higher Education" by Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle, is a cold, hard slap in the face for education, which has embraced the philosophy that it's important for a student to "feel good" than to actually learn anything.
The central idea in each of these stories stands in as the main character. Deep characterization or convoluted plot will not be found here; they are passed over in favor of brief and to-the-point solutions to problems ranging from prejudice to primal aggression. The uses to which several stories put the magic wand of nano-tailored viruses are particularly inventive, such as altering human social behavior.
As the editor states in the introduction, "Some of the stories in this book may offend. I certainly hope so." In this, Sheffield and his contributors have succeeded. And this is the book's ultimate strength and appeal, for it demands an engaged reader. It is the rare original collection that is totally successful, but this book comes closer than most, with more than its share of involving thought exercises. Though some of the stories are more idea-driven wish-fulfillments than practical solutions, the book successfully pushes a lot of buttons, and is sadly marred only by the indecipherable piece by Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg.
Whether you're predisposed to agree or disagree with the wide spectrum of viewpoints expressed on an array of emotionally charged subjects, or if tired of politically correct solutions to today's problems, then How to Save the World will be just what the doctor ordered.
-- Dave
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