Voyage to the Red Planet

by Terry Bisson

An extraordinary science fiction tour de force about the first trip to the planet Mars, filled with action, humor, and pathos. One of the finest, most carefully written science fiction extrapolations in years.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Satire

221 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

Terry Ballantine Bisson was an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), which which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as They're Made Out of Meat (1991), which has been adapted for video often.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyage to the Red Planet is a very good, very funny novel about the first interplanetary flight, which takes place twenty years later than planned due to economic collapse that causes the sale of all government assets to large business. The intrepid crew of The Mary Poppins goes to Mars more or less under the auspices of Disney-Gerber rather than NASA. It's a very amusing and satiric book, yet there's some really piquant drama and pathos for counterpoint that works quite well. There are a lot of popular culture references that are somewhat dated now (the book appeared over thirty years ago), though some are still quite relevant. (For example, character Louis Glamour is introduced while he is driving on the Trump-Hearst Freeway.) Some of the explanations of how things developed historically can now be viewed as an alternate-history scenario. There are some very silly bits, but I found myself rooting mightily for the success of the eight crew members on The Mary Poppins in their quest to explore (and film!) the mysterious red planet!

[EmBe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terry Bisson ist gestern am 10. Januar im Alter von 81 Jahren gestorben. Der Anlass für mich, an seinen Roman "Mars live" zu erinnern. Der Roman steht wohl am Anfang der der Marsroman-Welle ab den frühen 90er Jahren. Bisson hatte einen satirischen Ansatz: Im Roman hat Disney in naher Zukunft die Konkurs-Masse der NASA aufgekauft. Zu der gehören auch die Pläne einer Marsexpedition. Disney setzt sie um und macht aus der Expedition zum Mars eine Unterhaltungsshow.
War sehr unterhaltsam, habe mich gerne an den Roman erinnert, auch weil er mit bestimmten Lebensumständen und Personen verbunden ist.

[D.L. Morrese · Rating 3 out of 5]

What struck me when I was reading this near future space adventure is how dated it is. Much has happened since this was originally published in 1991 (not all that long ago), such as further (robotic) exploration of Mars and the collapse of the Soviet Union, both of which never occurred in this story. A couple of the things that did happen in this fictional tale were a rapid decline of the American space program and the privatization of most aspects of government, including NASA and the U.S. Navy. The book does not present a very hopeful future as a result, but it does provide a bit of subtle cultural satire.

It is told from and omniscient point of view with multiple characters, although the central one is Bass, an aging astronaut from NASA’s glory days. He is approached by an entertainment conglomerate to help ‘salvage’ a spacecraft built (but never used) by NASA and the Soviets, and to bring a crew of movie stars to Mars to make a movie and, as a result, a lot of money.

The writing is good, the characters are plausible and their individual motivations make sense, but the premise itself, in addition to being dated, just doesn’t. At least not much. I accept the exaggerations about corporate takeovers of government functions for the sake of cultural satire, but how could a huge spaceship be built in orbit without it being common knowledge? Why would it be fully provisioned and then abandoned until it is salvaged by a movie company twenty years later? And sunlight digitized and stored on CDs to provide a power source? Sorry. That’s not ridiculous enough to be funny or realistic enough to be believable.

All in all, this is a fairly enjoyable hard science fiction tale. It has some satire, a bit of humor, decent characters, and a plot that hangs together well. I can recommend it for Science Fiction fans looking for a good, old-fashioned story of near space.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twenty years prior, a huge multi-government task force built an interplanetary spaceship called the Mary Poppins - then the money ran out and interest dried up. Enter a very entrepreneurial Hollywood B-grade producer, cashed up and full of promises. He wants to make a movie about the first trip to Mars, while going to the red planet! Gathering a veteran American shuttle pilot (Bass) and a female Russian space commander (Kirov) they manage to get to the ship before the might of the Disney-Gerber corporation (which owns NASA) steals the ship from them. Leaving Earth orbit just ahead of the companies wanting to repossess the ship, and with two stowaways on board (a cat and a young woman who had won a trip to the space station in a magazine competition) they go into hibernation for the trip. Once at Mars some very odd things occur - a clay model of the base has been constructed a ways from the real base and the fuel they were relying on to leave the planet is not all there. Terry Bisson’s entertaining (and cynically satirical) novel presages problem-solving movies like The Martian, and gives the odd nod to SF’s history, in particular Stanley Weinbaum, as it savages Hollywood, movie-making and the cult of celebrity. Well worth a read!

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The library in Gatesville, the small Texas town that I grew up in, had a limited selection of books. It didn’t take me long to work my way through the science fiction section, and a foray into mysteries only sufficed to curb my reading appetite for one summer. Having completed the arbitrary categories that the librarians had set, I was forced to wander the stacks of “General Fiction” in search of a fix that could not be satisfied by a romance or a western or a novel of adultery in a small New England towns. This way I discovered Stephen King (there not being a “Horror” section in the late 70s) and Kurt Vonnegut. But going through every book and reading the inside flap was a time consuming task and, being ever the lazy person that I was, I quickly found a better way to discover these books: the card catalog.

I remember it was in the card catalog that I repeatedly ran up against the phrase “What if?” as being a clear indicator of my interest in a book, which quickly culminated in the discovery of a book whose entire premise was based on “What if?” What if Lincoln had never been assassinated? What if Columbus hadn’t discovered America? What if the South had won the war? From this I formulated my personal definition of SF: if it couldn’t intrigue me through the use of a simple “What if?” question, I doubted whether the novel could sustain my interest through 200 or more pages. (Later I was to discover that the Science Fiction Book Club had used “What if?” to attract thousands of readers long before I made my personal discovery. Synchronicity or faulty childhood memories? Whatever. Neither detract from the worth of the actual question.)

• What if a man’s brain was transferred to a woman’s body? I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein.
• What if a man was forced to relive his life over and over again? Replay by Ken Grimwood.
• What if a dragon was miles long and stories tall, dormant and people lived on and around it? “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” “The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter,” and “The Father of Stones” by Lucius Shepard.
• What if the first manned spaceflight to Mars was staged by a Hollywood film company? Voyage to the Red Planet by Terry Bisson.

Look at NASA…please! If there isn’t a more frightening indication of the impact of space on today’s culture, I’ll become a monk in space. Can you even see NASA from where you are, or is it hidden behind the lifestyles, the crime reports, the utter banality of “human interest” stories in the news? When you do hear about NASA it is either because they are requesting more money, having their budget cut by Congress, or they’ve delayed the shuttle launch yet again. Is today’s apathy with space caused by NASA’s incompetence, or vice versa? Either way, the future looks grim.

Grim tidings bring modest proposals. Bisson’s proposal in Voyage to the Red Planet may be hidden by a standard SF adventure plot, but it is as cutting as Jonathan Swift’s ever was. When the government has to sell off various departments (like NASA) to corporations to pay back the national debt, when movie stars become a new royalty, that’s where you’ll find Bisson, pillorying the temples with a humor and irreverence that’s a joy to read. In every chapter Bisson drops a casual remark that seems innocuous at first, but sits like a dormant virus until you immune system yells “Uncle” and then unleashes its full fury making you double- and triple-up in laughter.

The plot and writing reminded me of late 60s/early 70s Philip K. Dick, except jazzed up and in tune with the 90s. Like Dick’s novels, even though Voyage to the Red Planet is set in the future, its topic is the present. Today, Bisson says, we are in danger from greedy corporations threatening to gobble up each other in a gigantic Ouroboros-orgy, we are in danger of creating a new aristocracy with its own rules and classes, we are in danger of losing our perspective on what is important and what isn’t. What Bisson isn’t saying, though, is that the future or the present is filled with doom. If we can doctor ourselves with a little humor and stop taking everything so damned seriously, perhaps there will be some hope for us all.

Amen. And God bless us every one.

[Originally published in NOVA Express, v3 n3, Winter 1991]

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing 6 star book. Bisson manages to combine wry humor and satire, post shock doctrine capitalist dystopia, and ye olde play within the play. From this you would think it bleak, but no, it is warm and full of love and humanity.

The writing is impeccable. It's a real page turner, never a dull moment, but there is still time for heart opening sentences and beautiful descriptions, just sitting there in plain site.

Also, really really good ending.

There are like 4 pages of endorsements in the front of this from a variety of authors and publications. It's really good, I'm not kidding.

Is it a bit dated in terms of geopolitics? Yes and no. The breakup of the soviet union and america's 3rd world wars occuring in different countries than they actually did is inconsequential to the story. But it was just as implausible when it was written as it is now.

[Brown Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a whimsical yet poignant peek into the future, which presented circa 1990 a plausible Mars-visitation scenario. It is dated now, of course, but the emotional resonances of the story are still raw and real, if a bit bewhiskered. I think the story is a good way for younger people to gather intelligence about the Boomer appreciation of space, and a good way for Boomers to exercise their space race nostalgia, if they need to.

Also, this is a solid Mars-set novel, if you have a jones.

[Kody Dibble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a short read, but seemed to take me forever. A lot stringent details and after thoughts. The characters were at-least well designed up to a point, however I didn't understand some of the commentary from them. Not because of my lack of knowledge but just some vague sort of scenes. The ending was really wacky...However it didn't break down the whole book like it easily could of.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's good. A bit dated, although that's understandable (always interesting to read futures written in the past, because they show what people at the time were thinking would happen. In this case, it's corporations buying out the Federal Government). Nothing wrong with it, just a bit on the thin side.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading this in the early 1990s, when I was in college, and being struck by the idea of mega-corporations stepping up and taking over the duties of governments. On this re-read, I feel like the story didn't go far enough given how things are today. Younger me enjoyed this a lot more, and that is fine.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story has interesting politics woven into the background. Bisson imagines a future where corporations rule the world and the space program has been privatized along with every other government function you can imagine. He has a lot of fun with imagining the corporations of the future and the mergers and hostile takeovers that happen.

The space program was at one point ready to go to Mars but those plans were mothballed it was privatized. A producer decides to make a movie about humanity's first trip to Mars and finances the trip. Here, again, he makes the context interesting with his imagined future for Hollywood movies and movie stars.

Unfortunately, the space voyage part and the mechanics of travel and landing is really slow. I almost put the book down, but it picks up at the end and has an interesting finish, although it felt kind of rushed.

[Cindy Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a laugh-out-loud funny hard sci-fi book--a tough enough feat to pull off--but it works and it works fairly well. The surrealistic world run by corporations and movie companies (who can finance a trip to the Red Planet) seem more real as the years pass. The mechanics of the voyage and the ships used to reach Mars was well-researched and imparted with a minimum of fuss. My only criticism is the hardcover copy I read had some poor editing--confusing head hops (POV switches), typos on names, and some odd punctuation. Otherwise, this is an enjoyable read and makes you think how the privatization of space travel and exploration in the years to come is inevitable and, indeed, welcome.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. It was an easy quick read, but this story of the first voyage to Mars is handled with humor, scientific detail and a cast of likable characters.

From Bass and his old-school skills to the tough-as-nails Kirov and her soviet training, to the stowaway Greetings Brother Buffalo to the movie stars, "bones", and the director, the crew of the Mary Poppins was enjoyable to ride along with.

I enjoyed that there was no need for an evil intruder, or an alien monster, but rather that the action and adventure was just simple fun.

[Koji Mukai · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best mixture of science fiction and humor that I've ever encountered. The acknowledgement thanks 4 people "who helped the author avoid many errors and grotesqueries," and goes on to say "Those that remain in the book are the ones he just couldn't resist." That sums up the attitude of the book perfectly. The storyline itself - a Hollywood funded human mission to Mars - is scarily close to home in many ways.

[Matt Christ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great mixture of science fiction and satire, this novel captures the essence of human nature when all hope is lost and people resort to last-resort situations; I picked this one up at a used book sale at my local library, so it cost me maybe 20 cents, but it was definitely worth much more than that.

[Douglas Lee Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book some time ago and it blew my mind as reality TV was just getting started. Obviously someone else read it too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One