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Review Summaries
"Rainbow Mars features the continuing adventurers of the time traveller Svetz, who first appeared in the short story collection "Flight of the Horse". If you are lucky (depending upon your geographical location) you will get a free copy of these stories in the same volume as Rainbow Mars.
Its good to see that Niven can still write in the old style - the plot of this story allows a prime opportunity for him to "play tourist" again.
The premise of the story is back to the Institue of Temporal Research to gain yet another prize exibit for Waldemar the Eleventh. This time the Secretary General wants a captive Percival Lowell Martian who created the Canals on Mars that mysteriously disappeared before the space age probes visited the planet. An exploratory mission is sent via a series of extension cages and landers and roving rovers. This mission detects a flourishing civilisation made up of many sentient species. Also discovered is a huge orbit-spanning tree or beanstalk.
On seeing this woody wonder Waldemar the Eleventh immediately orders a manned mission to Mars to collect seeds from this tree to enable a space elevator to be grown on Earth. Svetz and two female astronauts from the Space Bureau accompany him. (for Rishathra fans the fist instance of sex occurs on page 29!). The overwhelming success of their mission has dire consequences for the future of Earth.
"
Nesssus, Resident Larry Niven Scholar
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Overall Review
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Plot
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION?
- part earth & part fantasy world
Explore/1st contact/ enviro story
Yes
Plotlets:
- dimension travel
- exploring a wondrous planet or phenomena
- colonizing/homesteading another planet
- preventing an ecological disaster
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- explorer
Age:
- 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- throughout most of the book.
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Setting
Terrain
- Desert
- Planet surface, need spacesuit
- Space, need spacesuit
Style
Person?
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
scientific jargon? (SF only)
- a significant amount of technical jargon
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- descript of touching personal anatomy
- weird alien sex
How much dialogue?
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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