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The Sands of Mars

Arthur C. Clarke

3.73 · Rating details · 3,704 ratings · 259 reviews

Space writers holiday. When a celebrated science fiction writer takes to space on his first trip to Mars, he's sure to be in for some heckling from the spaceship crew. But Martin Gibson, man about space, takes it all in his stride. That is, until he lands on the red planet. Once there the intrepid author causes one problem after another as he stumbles upon Mars's most care ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 229 pages

Published July 1991 by Bantam Spectra (first published November 1st 1951)

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100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books set on or about Mars

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Jun 30, 2019 Michael Jandrok rated it really liked it · review of another edition

We will get the obvious stuff out of the way first. “The Sands of Mars” was Arthur C. Clarke’s first foray into the science-fiction novel format after publishing a series of successful short stories. First published in 1951, it is a somewhat unusual offering within the greater Clarke canon, for reasons which we shall discuss in this review later. Now we can argue all day as to the dates of what constitutes the true “Golden Age of Science-Fiction,” but in my mind this book and quite a few of the We will get the obvious stuff out of the way first. “The Sands of Mars” was Arthur C. Clarke’s first foray into the science-fiction novel format after publishing a series of successful short stories. First published in 1951, it is a somewhat unusual offering within the greater Clarke canon, for reasons which we shall discuss in this review later. Now we can argue all day as to the dates of what constitutes the true “Golden Age of Science-Fiction,” but in my mind this book and quite a few of the others published in the early 1950s still fall within that nomenclature. Whatever the case, “The Sands of Mars” is an excellent novel of space-age adventure, part travelogue, part soap opera, and part love letter to the act of discovery and exploration as essential qualities of what makes us human.

The plot is as straightforward as you will ever get. Science-Fiction author Martin Gibson (a very obvious stand-in for Clarke himself) is traveling to the colonies of Mars on board the newest commercial space cruiser Aries. As it is the Arie’s shakedown cruise, Gibson is the only passenger, accompanied only by the small crew of the gigantic spacecraft. There are a few comic moments when Gibson has issues adjusting to the reality of weightless travel, but he quickly figures things out and he and the crew begin to bond over the course of their months long voyage. There are a few on board adventures to be had, including the interception of a vital experimental medicine necessary to combat what the colonists are calling “Martian fever.”

Gibson arrives on Mars having made friends with one of the junior members of the crew, Jimmy Spencer, who has an unusual personal tie to Gibson. Gibson soon settles into his role of intrepid travel explorer and reporter, sending missives back to Earth on a regular basis. The Mars colony itself is small, and contained within clear domes that have been terraformed to sustain human life. Gibson soon begins to get a feel for the colony, and manages to get himself into a scrape or two along the way. He finds a mysterious outpost during one of his travels in the Mars “outback.” He then seizes an opportunity to travel to one of the outlying cities on Mars, but the plane that he is flying on runs into a massive dust storm and crash lands. It is here where the story begins to take a turn towards adventure and mystery, as Gibson and his mates from the downed plane soon discover a new species of plant life on Mars, as well as a small colony of “Martians,” a reasonably intelligent animal species that sort of resembles kangaroos. Gibson ends up taking a sample of each new life form back to Port Lowell, the main city on Mars. He names his new pet “Squeak” in honor of the sound that it most often vocalizes. Along the way, Gibson finds himself drawn to the Martian colony, and he begins to think in long-term plans.

But there are many unanswered questions. What is the nature of the odd outpost that he discovered earlier, and how does it tie into the new plant that he discovered? Are “Squeak” and his marsupial companions the only remaining examples of animal life left on Mars? What is the nature of “Project Dawn,” a much-whispered about but never revealed plot thought to be covertly run by the Mars Administration? What exactly is the relationship between Gibson and Jimmy? What secrets does Warren Hadfield, the gruff Chief Executive of Mars Administration hide? Will Gibson’s immersion into Martian culture cause him to “switch allegiances” and commit himself fully to the colonist’s causes? Don’t worry, all of these questions and more will be deftly answered by the end of the novel, but you will get no more spoilers from me.

I’ll state for the record right here that “The Sands of Mars” contains some of Clarke’s most personable writing. Often criticized for his lack of characterization, Clarke paints some pretty deep people in this book. There are times when it almost feels like a soap opera in space as he traces all of the relationships down to their logical ends. The Gibson character mirrors Clarke’s own life to some degree, even down to the failed relationship with a woman in college that may explain the nature of his relationship to Jimmy. Clarke himself had a short marriage to a woman, and remained a bachelor for the rest of his life thereafter. Fortunately there is little in the way of sexuality in “The Sands of Mars,” so we can leave all of the “other” speculations behind and focus on the adventure and fun to be had as the book comes to its satisfying climax.

What Clarke IS most often known for is his keen grasp on hard science-fiction ideas and his uncanny ability to forecast future technologies and societal trends. He’s a bit off base here, but not too far if you consider what we actually knew about Mars back in 1951. This is a far cry from H. G. Wells or Edgar Rice Burroughs. You will find no vicious Martian land rovers spouting deadly fire, nor will you discover scantily clad alien princesses idling lazily as heroes draw swords and heave their massive thews. No, what you get in “The Sands of Mars” is a reasonable portrait of interplanetary travel as it might have existed in the future, along with a bevy of other interesting technical details that hit or miss the mark in various ways. Clarke was certainly not short on ideas. And you can even see the beginnings of what would eventually turn Clarke from a “good” science-fiction writer into one of the all-time greats, a concept that I like to call “The Big Idea.” A lot of Arthur C. Clarke’s later works would enter into Big Idea territory. The transformation of the entire human race in “Childhood’s End.” The senses-shattering journey into the farthest reaches of the galaxy with a side shot of the transformation of the entire human race in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The monumental first contact with an alien artifact in “Rendezvous With Rama.” These are the books that Clarke is best known for, and while “The Sands of Mars” harbors no such aspirations, you can still see the seed of Clarke’s grand ambition on display here.

Personally, I loved this book. I’m not going to give it five stars as it never ramps itself up to anything of a major status. But I liked the cast of characters. I liked Clarke’s happy-go-lucky sort of British pluck that he infuses the entire story with. I didn’t mind that the whole thing read like a 1950s science-fiction travelogue crossed with a soap opera of epic proportions. At the end of the day the book just made me feel GOOD. “The Sands of Mars” is a prime reason why I enjoy Golden Age science-fiction so much. The idea that the universe was ours to explore, the grand scale, the epic notion that human beings could work together to achieve massive and far-reaching goals, the sheer OPTIMISM of the whole thing. Arthur C. Clarke and a number of other authors envisioned a world where anything was possible, and that sort of enthusiasm wasn’t lost on an entire generation of people who would eventually come together and place the footprints of human beings upon the moon.

In short, “The Sands of Mars” is a tidy, fun read that never gets too far off of its path and will leave you feeling satisfied and happy after you have turned the last page. It’s a short step up from some of the “juvenile” fiction that Robert Heinlein was writing around the same time, and you could easily fit this book into the “YA” category today. Highly recommended for any Arthur C. Clarke fan and/or any fan of Golden Age science-fiction. ...more

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Aug 17, 2018 Sharon Barrow Wilfong rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I am attracted to Science Fiction from the first half of the twentieth century. I like the cover art from the paperbacks; I like the retro feel from the stories too.

If you like books based primarily on world building, then you will enjoy this book. If you depend more on a story-line with an arc and characters that are well-developed, this story may disappoint.

Martin Gibson is a writer and he has been selected to fly on a spaceship to Mars and send back news to Earth. Earth wants to know if the e ...more

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Nov 12, 2016 Arnis rated it liked it

https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/201... ...more

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Sep 21, 2016 Anders Blixt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

British-Lankese author Arthur C Clarke was one of the titans of science fiction when I was young in the 1970s, together with Americans Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. As I see it, Clarke was at his best from the late 1940s to the end of the 1960s, a period during which he for instance wrote the famous short-stories “The Sentinel” and “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Around 1950, he wrote The Sands of Mars, a sand-in-the-spacesuit novel about one man’s exploration of Mars and of himself, a stor British-Lankese author Arthur C Clarke was one of the titans of science fiction when I was young in the 1970s, together with Americans Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. As I see it, Clarke was at his best from the late 1940s to the end of the 1960s, a period during which he for instance wrote the famous short-stories “The Sentinel” and “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Around 1950, he wrote The Sands of Mars, a sand-in-the-spacesuit novel about one man’s exploration of Mars and of himself, a story of growth and transformation, of becoming an adult and responsible individual.

Clarke possessed a talent I have come to like more and more with advancing age, the ability to write an interesting yarn without introducing violent conflicts or bad-guy characters. The Sands of Mars is a prime example: it deals with saving lives (futuristic medicine), making deserts bloom (well, sort of), and the constructive handling an old mess (no spoiler here). The main character, a science fiction author named Martin Gibson, grows in a credible manner from being immature and egocentric to assuming great responsibility.

I found the novel in a bargain bookshop in my hometown Gothenburg in the late 1970s and it has remained in my bookshelf ever since. I have read it so many times that I can summarize it “on the run”. At the time of the purchase, the novel was about 25 years old and its description of Mars had been rendered obsolete by the detailed photo-mapping of the Red Planet by Mariner 9 in 1972. But that did not matter much, because I liked it from the start.

Clarke sends the reader to a worn-out Mars covered by rolling deserts without exciting topology. Its carbon-dioxide atmosphere is reasonably thick and its dunes are home only to hardy plants — not a Martian in sight. One of the main themes is the interaction between the colonists and the planet, how people’s mindsets get “martianized” while they are busy making the planet more human-friendly.

Another interesting matter that Clarke deals a lot with is the significance of administration and efficient use of scarce resources. Establishing a permanent human presence on Mars is an expensive and time-consuming project and, in order to succeed, it must be managed in a professional and unheroic manner. Therefore production statistics and balance sheets get as important as back-breaking labor. Scientific progress — i.e. in physics, chemistry, and xenobiology — is the underlying key to success and Clarke uses this trope to create suspense: every now and then protagonist Martin Gibson asks himself “What the heck is really going on here?”

Does the novel have any weaknesses? The gender roles are antiquated and the story fails the Bechdel test. But that’s what Europe in 1950 looked like. And it is hard to criticize Clarke here, because he does show how working women participate in the colonization of Mars even though they get almost no speaking parts in Martin Gibson’s adventures. From literary standpoint, the prose suffers from occasional Clarke-isms (quasi-philosophical expressions like “the stream of time”, not-so-funny humor, etc) that disrupt its otherwise smooth flow.

In the 1950s, the readers must have seen The Sands of Mars as a plausible description of what interplanetary colonization could be like. Today, six decades later, the story’s technology is partially outdated (e.g. Martin Gibson uses a typewriter and carbon-copies; radios have tubes instead of transistors) and partially futuristic (e.g. the well-described nuclear-powered passenger ship by which Gibson travels to Mars). But despite its age, the novel remains a piece of solid craftsmanship because it deals with an issue that always is with us: how to build a better world for our children, be it on Mars or on Earth. ...more

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Nov 06, 2014 Anna Lehmicke rated it really liked it

This is the first Arthur C. Clarke novel I've read. I can't compare it to his own later novels, but it is interesting to note the differences between Sci-Fi of the 50s to the genre today. Fax machines on an interstellar spaceship? Hillariously quaint! Turning a moon into a sun? Preposterously convenient! While the character-building was well done, and the few passages that were descriptive of the Mars Clarke was guiding us through were eloquent and picturesque, the book as a whole was fairly sim ...more

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Nov 26, 2015 Derek rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'm having trouble putting this into context. When originally published, what sort of book would sit next to it? Something pulpy and ridiculous? Was this revolutionary in its cold fidelity to hard physics and technological understanding of the time? What would I compare this to?

Given Clarke's stringent adherence and reputation, it's tempting to pick at the things he doesn't get right--cigarettes on spaceships, typewriters, administrator-secretaries on Mars, meteorologists on space stations, news ...more

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Oct 03, 2021 Leo rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction

Golden Age Science Fiction is one of my favorite genres but I have not read much Arthur C. Clarke, despite his reputation and being a fan of the film 2001. I decided to change that.

I have a old Clarke Omnibus hardback put out by the Science Fiction Book Club titled Prelude To Mars. It includes two complete novels and sixteen short stories. The first novel is Prelude To Space. It’s about the first manned flight to the moon. Having lived through Apollo I doubted I would get any pleasure from a ha ...more

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Apr 07, 2010 Larry rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Clarke fans and those who like an adventure story

Martin Gibson is a science fiction writer and he decides to spend his money on a trip to the red planet which is now becoming colonised. Gibson seems lacking in knowledge of space travel and how things work up there and so Jimmy, a young apprentice, is assigned as Gibson's teacher as it were. The two become friends and soon Gibson is accepted as part of the group (at first he is looked down upon, as just another writer of space adventures). He is invited along on a mission across the planet in a ...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Tomislav rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, read-2-times

second read - 4 April 2012 *** - I last read this 39 years ago. It's hard to believe this 1951 novel was approximately 20 years old then, and approximately 60 years old now. I re-read it now because it was the yahoogroups Hard-SF book of the month for March 2012, and in order to count it in the paperbackswap 2Q2012 SF Challenge as a first novel of a British writer. This could be considered a precursor, set in the same universe, as Clarke's Space Odyssey books.

I'm afraid I remembered next to noth ...more

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Feb 13, 2021 Fran Garcia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As it is written in the book:
(Science fiction) may sometimes have a social value when its written, but to the next generation it must always seem quaint and archaic.
Not bad at all for a 1951 book.

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Feb 03, 2019 S. Naomi Scott rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: golden-age-masterworks

Before I get into the meat of my review let me get one thing out of the way right now. This book is almost seventy years old, written before we had any real understanding of what Mars was like. We hadn't even managed to get anything into orbit when this book first came out, so there's bound to be a bit of a separation between the science and technology we know now and what this book asserts. Got that? Good.

The story follows the adventures of sci-fi writer Martin Gibson as he becomes the first to Before I get into the meat of my review let me get one thing out of the way right now. This book is almost seventy years old, written before we had any real understanding of what Mars was like. We hadn't even managed to get anything into orbit when this book first came out, so there's bound to be a bit of a separation between the science and technology we know now and what this book asserts. Got that? Good.

The story follows the adventures of sci-fi writer Martin Gibson as he becomes the first tourist to visit Mars. The book is essentially in two halves; the first half tells us about the journey itself aboard the liner Ares, while the second half deals with Gibson's time on Mars and what he finds there. At its core, this is a story of exploration, but as with so much of Clarke's work there are multiple layers to the narrative, and also in common with what I've read of Clarke's work to date this is one hell of a readable story.

With the first half being set on the liner Ares we get to learn a lot about the operation of the ship and her crew. Even with a limited knowledge of spaceflight and interplanetary travel Clarke is able to present a believable and enlightening narrative, which can be a little dry at times but rarely fails to entertain. We're amused by Gibson's first experience of low gravity and freefall, as well as his initial bout of space sickness; we're presented with an awe-inspiring description of the galaxy free of the haze of an atmosphere; we get to share Gibson's first (and only) spacewalk, albeit in a suit that never was. This is Clarke in his element, taking the technical aspects of what was known about space travel at the time and turning them into a fun, enticing story that makes it sound oh so easy.

The second half brings us to Mars, via a brief stop-off at Deimos, and it isn't long before the tone of the story changes. Instead of being an exploration of space travel we're now presented with a frontier tale coupled with a subtle, almost invisible, detective story. The colonists of Mars are up to something, keeping secrets, but Gibson doesn't seem all that driven to find out what. Instead, he seems more interested in discovering Mars for himself, trying to get to grips with the colonist spirit. Here Mars is shown to be an inhospitable wasteland with a poisonous CO2 rich atmosphere. The colonists, for the most part, live under domes in the capital city of Port Lowell. There's a brief exploration of the plant life native to the red planet but mainly the second half focuses on the interaction between the various characters and how they deal with the dangers around them.

As I mentioned at the top of this review, there's a lot that Clarke gets wrong in here, science and tech wise, but that's okay because this is great book despite that. Yes, it is representative of its time, particularly where gender roles seem to be concerned - the very few female characters mentioned are there as props for the male characters to interact with, while all the important jobs are undertaken by men - but it still has a lot to say about human ingenuity. This is typically optimistic fare from Clarke, and one of those books I'd say anyone genuinely interested in the history of sci-fi should add to their reading list.

There's a reason Clarke is considered one of the Grand Masters of science fiction, and this, his first full length novel, goes a long way to show us what that reason is.
...more

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Jul 29, 2020 Matthew Barnes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An enjoyable read, with some nice twists and turns.

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Sep 15, 2021 Dev Taylor rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Pretttttttty "pulpy" stuff. For me, it's not one of his better works. Still, it was an alright-enough-palate-cleanser for me to start the fall. ...more

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Jul 07, 2021 Patrick DiJusto rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021, ebook, nyplwishlist

This book is Arthur c Clarke's first novel, published in 1951, and in some ways, probably his most human. It's written by a child of the British empire, who recognizes that the British empire was wrong, (without quite accepting how wrong it was,) and who doesn't want to make the same mistake when humanity colonizes the solar system. It's also written by a closeted gay man who literally had to hide his love away.

The story concerns a middle-aged science fiction writer, no doubt Clarke as he though ...more

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Sep 04, 2010 Vernon rated it it was ok

This has been a difficult novel to rate, partly due to it being Clarke's "first full-length novel," but also that I've found it difficult to keep thoughts of the author's later masterpieces (i.e., The City and the Stars; Childhood's Endcertainly two of the greatest works yet produced in the entire realm of Science Fiction) from impinging onto memory as a no doubt unfair comparison.

The Sands of Mars is an example of an author not only stretching his imagination into a novel-length statement for

...more

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Dec 14, 2018 Jason Vanhee rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Perfectly serviceable terribly quaint novel about the settlement of Mars in I guess the 1990s? It was Clarke's first novel, written in about 1948 and published in 1951, and Mars has a (thin but far too thick) atmosphere, weird plants, (spoiler) animals, and no mountains at all--we hadn't figured out yet the biggest mountain in the Solar System is there. There's a lot of realism to it though, in that it's not Starry Eyed Space Settlers, but bureaucratic intrusions and officious gentlemen and peop ...more

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May 08, 2019 K.A. Ashcomb rated it liked it

This book is wish-fulfillment science fiction about traveling to space and to another planet. And not just anybody's wish, I think the writer's himself. It was the only thing I could think when I read the book. "This is what he dreams when he shut his eyes." To experience space travel and colonize another planet, Mars, as it will be the first planet humans can actually go to and most probably live on. Arthur C. Clarke's dream and love for space are vivid in the detailed description of spacefligh ...more

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Sep 15, 2021 Mohammad Noroozi rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 17, 2017 Daniel Kukwa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: other-sf-fantasy

The first Arthur Clarke story I've ever had to read as an historical artifact, as opposed to a simple novel. By his own admission, the story is written prior to the major (and by implication, disappointing) discoveries in the 60s and 70s about the spartan/sterile nature of Mars. The result is almost like reading an alternate universe rendition of the red planet; a final visit to a Mars more recognizable by Ray Bradbury than by authors like Ben Bova. It's both fascinating & deeply weird. On top o ...more

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May 12, 2019 Tomer rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio, space, sf

{rounded down from 2.5}
At times it almost funny and I did appreciate the autobiography elements with some humor on authors of the genre and breaking the fourth page.. nonetheless I just could not attach to the plot and any main events, sorry.

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Jul 28, 2019 Barbie rated it it was amazing

What a twist and what an ending.

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May 10, 2021 Fernando Cárdenas rated it really liked it

Masterpiece of science fiction. The Sands of Mars explore the basics of space exploration and its implications in human society and politic interaction by simple sending a writer to a colony in mars.

By investigating and developing the technology (view spoiler) the story is set without further implications. That simple yet complex plot is enough to give us this amazing book with Gibson as the center piece of the conflict in which he does not know ...more

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Jan 06, 2014 David Roberts rated it really liked it

I am reviewing the hard science fiction novel The Sands Of Mars by Arthur C Clarke which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This is one of his early books written in 1951. The plot is an author is on his way to Mars when his ship, he is flying solo, runs into trouble. He is taken aboard a space freighter and completes his journey to Mars. He is stuck on the freighter for a while and the crew mostly leave him alone and he spends alot of his time reading magazines. There is only a sma ...more

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Jul 21, 2015 Leviathan Libraries rated it liked it

I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book as much as I did the first in the trilogy, but... I didn't.

For some reason, I struggled to keep my attention on the book for at least the first half. It was mildly interesting, but not enough to keep my focus on it.

I didn't really start, I think, to pay attention to what I was reading, until Squeak and the Airweed got involved.

The problem that I have with Clarke seems to be that he's a wonderful writer for the FIRST book in a series, and that after tha ...more

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Jul 23, 2014 intrepideddie rated it did not like it

Shelves: sci-fi

This was probably a good book back when it was published (1951), but it focuses too much on "real" science that is now outdated and/or wrong. Which is funny, because two of the characters in the book have a friendly argument about whether science fiction stories survive the test of time (chapter 5). It starts off as an interesting discussion, but it doesn't go anywhere and is never resolved.

And that's sort of the tone of the entire book: it just meanders and never really goes anywhere. No real p ...more

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Apr 10, 2016 Mike Howells rated it it was amazing

There's just something about classic 1950s sci-fi that makes you feel excited about the future. Everything is a little over-simplified, from the exobiology to the human psychology, but wouldn't it be great if colonising other planets was this easy?

Films like Interstellar (awful) and The Martian (awesome) try to recapture that optimism, but somehow never quite get it. Maybe I'm showing my age but compared to new sci-fi, some of which is seriously depressing, I'll give Mr Clarke 4-5 stars every t ...more

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Apr 07, 2010 Erik Graff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Clarke fans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: sf

This was one of the earliest science fiction novels I ever read and helped establish Arthur C. Clarke as one of my favorite childhood authors. It also happens to be one of his first science fiction books. Now I would probably find it quaint and boring, but then it was quite exciting. Like Jimmy in the novel, I planned, among other things, to be an astronaut.

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Nov 22, 2016 Erin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, i-own, science-fiction

This is a quaint novel that plods along at its own pace. I like how Clarke hints and makes references to the future Mars that will come to be. This gives the narrative, which is short and rather contained, a feeling of fullness and scale that I really enjoy.

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Nov 29, 2018 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Clarke's first novel to find publication, in 1951, "The Sands of Mars" naturally seems dated to the reader of 2018. This, however, detracts little from its overall appeal. While Asimov's contemporaneous sociological musing can come off as wooden, Clarke instills in the reader a genuine enthusiasm which bridges the 65-plus-year fact gap in his hard science. In describing the journey of a writer aboard the first passenger ship to humanity's first colony on another planet, Clarke wrestles, with som ...more

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Feb 18, 2017 Alison rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Apparently this is Clarke's first "full length" novel - it's still pretty short but longer than a short story. And I wonder if the lead character is a writer because he fell back on the old adage - write what you know. It might have felt safer when embarking on a longer form for the first time.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I did Foundation. In part that might be because I forgave the book in advance for being written in 1951, and containing all the societal luggage of the era. I think, however, ...more

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About Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur Charles Clarke was one of the most important and influential figures in 20th century science fiction. He spent the first half of his life in England, where he served in World War Two as a radar operator, before emigrating to Ceylon in 1956. He is best known for the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-created with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke was a graduate of King ...more