a_r_egerton's Full Review: Robert Zubrin - How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guid...
How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guide to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet is a hoot. This science fiction satire takes a swipe at just about everything: NASA, science fiction, travel guides, etc. The central conceit and joke is that the narrator is not the idealistic, noble explorer who has the Right Stuff, like Neil Armstrong or such fictional descendants as Captain Kirk. Instead, he's a cynical, venal jerk who is something of a crook.
The "About the Author" segment sets the tone: "A man whose career has required the use of several names, Robert Zubrin was born in New Plymouth in 2071 and graduated Heinlein High in 2099. Due to an unfortunate accident that caused his parents' payoff to the school administration to be misplaced, he was mistakenly ranked near the bottom of his class and was forced to accept employment from NASA for seven years.... He is no (proven) relation whatsoever to his twentieth-century namesake, a humorless astronautical engineer who developed the Mars Direct mission plan, authored the classic treatise The Case for Mars, and led the founding of the Mars Society in 1998. He regrets any confusion his current nom de plume may have caused."
Of course, it's the "humorless astronautical engineer" who's the actual author. He has indeed written a number of non-fiction books about exploring Mars, including the aforementioned The Case for Mars, plus Entering Space and First Landing. He has a doctorate in nuclear engineering and a master's in aeronautics and astronautics. Some of the illustrations were done by Michael Carroll, Robert Murray, Pat Rawlings, and Daein Ballard, and many of these fit the book's snarky tone, like the one of a guy coming home to a deflated "hab" (habitat or prefab house)-- which also shows a garden gnome and pink flamingo in the yard. Other illustrations were supplied by NASA itself, which suggests that some of the people there are good sports, given the number of potshots Zubrin takes at the organization-- or that maybe they were in on the joke.
Zubrin's guide comes in two main parts: "The Basics of Survival" and the "The Basics of Success." The first part is by far the better one. Here, Zubrin gives advice on how to get to Mars, choose a spacesuit, set up a "hab," and so forth. In this section Zubrin will sometimes refer to things from actual space programs. For example, he tells us that the Russian space station Mir was abandoned and destroyed in 2000 after 14 years in orbit, because of sanitation problems. He graphically describes her as becoming "filled with green slime." What happened to the Mir was that the humans who stayed aboard her left behind their bacteria, and it apparently proved impossible to fumigate her. This same problem plagues Zubrin's "cyclers," hybrids of space stations and space shuttles that ferry people from Earth to Mars and back. Zubrin therefore urges his readers to not take a cycler to Mars. (Three guesses which organization built the cyclers...) Similarly, he urges people not to buy landrovers that were originally designed for the moon. The reason? The moon's gravity is about 40% that of Mars, which means anything designed for use there is going to be too light and fragile for use on Mars.
Other chapters clearly take a shot at science fiction cliches. The section on spacesuits describes "elastic suits," the skintight spacesuits beloved of sci-fi artists and writers. Zubrin points out that these only look good on people with "the right figure" and are unforgiving of any changes in weight. The illustration by Michael Carroll of a slender woman and a not-so-slender woman in elastic suits drives home the point: Most people are better off wearing the old-fashioned pneumatic suits, which are the ones that astronauts from the current space program wear. Zubrin also advises readers not to get a white spacesuit, because it will only get covered with Mars' red dust.
"The Basics of Success," alas, is much weaker. Here Zubrin discusses such matters as seeking gainful employment on Mars. He describes some jobs that should be avoided at all costs, such as any kind of sanitation work. That's not so bad, but Zubrin's "space crook" persona essentially takes over and he gives far too much space to various scams. Chapter after chapter on various ways to swindle people, no matter how imaginative, gets old. Not even the illustrations can save this stuff. (There's one of people planting what looks like an altered Triceratops skull for later "discovery" as an "alien" fossil, and their landrover bears the logo, "Sam's Genuine Fossils.") More interesting and entertaining chapters describe various flying machines used on Mars and Martian social life. How to Live on Mars is set roughly one hundred years in the future. As per the narrator, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. each have a colony on Mars, and the American colony is called New Plymouth. The government is called the Mars Authority, and construction and prospecting are among the booming industries. Interestingly, there is also a female-run mafia called the Sisterhood Syndicate. Mars does have an agriculture, as the pioneers have and use large high-tech greenhouses. Mushrooms are a staple crop, as they can be grown "in any closet or underground cellar." A typical "mushroom ranch" consists of a "large room in the front for the standard protein-producing species, with additional chambers in the back for growing higher-value recreational varieties." Livestock such as goats and chickens are also kept on Mars.
In the main, Zubrin does a good job in making the science involved comprehensible to the layman. There are a few areas where he stumbles, though, most notably in the section on terraforming, which is the hypothetical scientific discipline of altering a planet's climate and biosphere to make it more like Earth's. To be fair, given that terraforming Mars would involve altering its gravity, temperature, oxygen content, and so forth, it's probably no wonder he got bogged down in technobabble here. Zubrin seems to be aware of the problem, and has thus interspersed his book with several "Technical Notes." True to form, the "Techinal Notes" always start off with "WARNING: High Science Content," and Zubrin has obviously arranged them to make it easy for the reader to skip them. Still, I found most of the "Technical Notes" understandable. Zubrin also includes a helpful glossary at the end, and even here he sometimes waxes sarcastic. For example, his definition of "regolith" reads: "What most people commonly refer to as dirt."
In sum, How to Live on Mars is mostly both funny and clever, but Zubrin does get bogged down in technobabble in a few parts. Worse, he beats his "space crook" joke into the ground.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.