Red Planet

This was a no nonsense adventure story, set on the planet Mars. Its main audience it young adult, even a little younger if they're avid readers, but it wasn't that childish after all and actually holds a few lessons.

The story is fairly simple. It's set in a distant future where colonies on Mars are actually a fact. We follow two friends, Jim and Frank, both sixteen years old, who embark on a trip to their new school.
On this trip they spend some time with the native inhabitants of the planet, the Martians. You get to know their creatures through Jim's perspective which inhibits truly understanding them, but it's all you get.

When enrolled, their good natured headmaster is replaced with a drill instructor- like ruler of the school grounds. Life quickly turns sour for Jim and Frank and with certain events set in motion, they accidentally stumble upon a dark secret which will require help from both humans and Martians.

So with my 'high level' summary of the story, I'll end my two cents that I'd recommend this book to young boys who dream of breaking boundaries.
The story wasn't too bad, but for character development or suspenseful story telling I'd have to guide you to other corners of the book universe.
This one clearly didn't mind the occasional 'Deus Ex Machina', which denied the story its full maturity.

Review of Stranger in a Strange Land

I've taken ages to finish this novel.
Too bad because it seems to me that most of the so-called gems of fantasy and science fiction seem rather tedious and overly done.
I can compare what I'm feeling having read this novel, almost struggled through it, with Dune, which I read last year. Both novel started off very promising and got you hooked and then just tagged you along indefinitely.

Stranger in a strange land is the story about a human being born on Mars, living out his teens and early adulthood there and then being taken back to earth.
So, instead of a novel about a guy seeing and talking about a planet not earth, we get someone who hasn't developed in our society trying to get used to our whims.

It's difficult to write a novel from the perspective of not having lived on earth, the writer tries his best, but in the end accomplishes only a pamphlet of guilt free sex and the end of monogamy.
I've read other novel of him before, Friday, and in there this has been stretched to almost the laughable.

I don't mind being liberal, especially when it concerns our fantasy, but when it interferes with a novel that could've been better, it does sadden me.
I wonder why this novel earned such praise, because if something like this should see the light of day nowadays, I wonder if it would still be as succesful? (Who am I kidding? They'd probably sell like hotcakes, a movie would be made with terrible acting but with a great marketing team behind it and every fool would spend his or her money on it, hoping to see a bit of scandal)

I didn't like it. I'm not sure why I stuck by it? Maybe I wanted to see how it would end.. For those who have read this novel, I would definitely be someone throwing some of the rocks, yell at me if you don't like this, I'm just giving my honest opinion.
Although Mike, the stranger in this book, isn't to blame of having been portrayed by an artist too consumed with spreading his opinion on our sex life.

I'm sounding like a prude, I know, but I don't like sex being used in popular culture. It's a too easy strategy for selling, causing you to forget the true meaning.

Review of Friday

Science fiction from the 80's. What can you expect?
Friday isn't the kind of novel you'd put in the same place as Space Odyssey, but it has got its own merit.

I liked what the author tried with this novel. Instead of giving the future a major part in the novel, it became part of the background. Just the scene where the action happens, it reads like an adventure novel set in the future instead of in this day and age.

The woman we follow throughout the book is Friday, a cyborg, or maybe not. She's actually a testtube baby but apparently society in Heinlein's book doesn't see them as actual human beings. Today we can already filter out bad genes if we have certain diseases in the family we don't want our child to inherit, and Friday also had a magnificent set of genes. She's immune to certain diseases, her reflexes are quicker and her senses just a little better than ours.
She designed to fulfill certain duties in life, that can vary from lifeguard to sexual companion.

Friday herself is a courier. She travels around the globe and the other planets, carrying information. What she does is best described as clandestine, because her job sometimes needs her to kill a few adversaries that are in her way.
Her mindset can best be described as liberal. She doesn't have a problem with what she does, because she sees herself as not being part of the human race. Each time she tries to connect with humans, most turn away from her when they find out she's not altogether that common. Also, she's sexually progressive. Sexual acts are being described fairly abstract as if she doesn't see it as an act of love, but more as physical exercise. She even says that in the novel, although not in those words.
I'm not sure these are a fiction from the author's mind or his way to display his opinion on the matter, but I found it to be a little over the top.
I don't mind what happens in the novel, but what I did mind was how Friday went about it. And it's not even her alone. Apparently in the future, sex isn't treated as sacred as it is today. Most humans don't mind mingling constantly with others, trading their spouses, joining others during their intimate acts.
I'm not sure what to think of it. Would it be better if sex wasn't treated as exclusive as it is now? For as far as I'm concerned, it's the thrill of not being sure when or with whom that makes us as pliable as most of us are. If it would be widely available with no repurcussions, people would just end up not doing it anymore. Or not as much. Most of us anyway.
But what do I know. I just wished it wasn't a major part of the book. It bothered me a little. Sex just be a chain of events, as a topic it lacks depth because in the end it all turns out the same.

But enough about the better part of marriage, Friday wasn't a bad novel, if you omit the free spiritness of it. It's not a world I'd like to live in, but Heinlein did portray a believable world.

I'm giving this novel a 6,5 out of 10.