Sands of Mars – Buch gebraucht kaufen

0283986107

(ISBN-13: 9780283986109)

wie neu

207

London

3. Auflage

Taschenbuch

Englisch

Sands of Mars

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 carefully hidden secrets and threatens the future of an entire planet!

It is the Twenty-First century. On Mars a dedicated group of pioneers – among them some of Earth’s finest brains – struggle to change the face of the planet… The Mars of this novel has no fabulous cities or exotic princesses: it is the planet which modern science has revealed to us, and the book’s authenticity provides a far greater exciement than would fantasy.

Against this background, Arthur C. Clarke has woven a thrilling story about a group of very real people, to show that amidst the wonder of future science, human nature will stay very much the same.

----
About the author:

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's College, London where he obtained First Class Honours in Physics and Mathematics. He is past Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Academy of Astronautics, the Royal Astronomical Society, and many other scientific organizations.

Author of over fifty books, his numerous awards include the 1961 Kalinga Prize, the AAAS-Westinghouse science writing prize, the Bradford Washburn Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for his novel Rendezvous With Rama. Clarke also won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979, the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.

----
Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke:

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." — Arthur C. Clarke

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here." — Arthur C. Clarke

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." — Arthur C. Clarke

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." — Arthur C. Clarke (Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible)

----
Reviews from readers:

"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." - Michael Jandrok


"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." - Anders Blixt, Author
----

Like new. Pages slightly darkened due to age.

Comparable new price: €21.00 (incl. shipping).
Your savings on a new purchase: -10% or -2.10 € (incl. Shipping).

----
Weitere interessante Bücher auf: / More interesting books on:
t1p.de/arthurian-scifi (Science Fiction)
t1p.de/arthurian-en (Englische Bücher / English books)
t1p.de/arthurian-fav2 (die beliebtesten Bücher / the most popular books)
t1p.de/arthurian-fav (beliebte Bücher / popular books)
t1p.de/arthurian (das gesamte Sortiment / the entire range)

Englische Bücher, science fiction, Favorit, Favorit2, Favorit3

1980

2461