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Loading... The Road to Marsby Eric Idle
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Brilliant study of the red nose and white face clowns, as well as a satisfying story. For someone more often reading more "hard and heavy" or "high concept" science fiction, this was a nice break. Not a laugh on every page a la Red Dwarf, but a thoroughly enjoyable and completely different application of the genre. (  )1   Robyn_Bradshaw | Jul 3, 2009 |  i'm a pink comedian?! What did you expect, it's Eric idle, already. "The cold antisceptick sting of the swiss frank." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRKYsa... Few comedians are pfunnier and more intelligent than E.I. And he's a 'scholar' of comedy, on par with the fellow who wrote LOVE STORY. They prate of the Bragadoccio; the Miles Gloriosus, (doubtless I'm butchering the spellings), clownish fellow in the white suit, (Poussin has a great rendering of this hapless voter), the swindler, and much more. When one is tired of Eric Idle one is tired of life. ( ) Porius | Oct 8, 2008 | "The are two types of comedian," states Carlton in the preface to his dissertation, "both deriving from the circus., which I shall call the White Face and the Red Nose. Almost all comedians fall into one or the other of these two simple archetypes. In the circus, the White Face is the controlling clown with the deathly pale masklike face who never takes a pie; the Red Nose is the subversive clown with the yellow and red makeup who takes all the pies and the pratfalls and the buckets of water and the banana skins. The White Face represents the mind, reminding humanity of the constant mocking presence of death; the Red Nose represents the body, reminding mankind of its constant embarrassing vulgarities. Alex Muscroft and Lewis Ashby are a comedy double-act working the outer reaches of the solar system, known as the Road to Mars. They are accompanied by their robot Carlton, who is writing a thesis called De Rerum Comoedia (Concerning Comedy), although he doesn’t understand irony or what makes a joke funny. After Alex's big mouth blows their chances of a long engagement on a solar cruise liner, and leads to the cancellation of all the other gigs they had booked, they decide to head straight for the bright lights of Mars, but find themselves caught up in a some rather dangerous events. (  ) isabelx | May 31, 2008 | Not exactly Hope and Crosby. I loved the droid. I don't read a whole lot of science fiction, especially not space-y stuff (really loved the early Crichton books) which was satisfied by liberal watchings of Star Trek incarnations, so I can't compare this to others of the genre. That said, I liked it. It did not sound at all Pythonesque. The life or death chess match with the self-replicating bomb was cleverly done and begs a cinematic treatment. I'm not too sure about the ending. I have that same problem with Buckley. So [clutching her head in concentration] ... may-be-the-pro-blem-is-not-them ... may-be-it's-me ...NAH! marfita | Mar 21, 2008 | Not what I was expecting. I suppose I thought this would be more "pythonesque" with larger helpings of both the surreal and the slapstick. In fact there are three stories running in parallel here - a fairly pedestrian sci-fi action adventure (the plotting of which breaks down badly towards the end); a discourse on the nature of comedy (see though the eyes of an android- didn't the do that on Star Trek The Next Generation?); and a first person narrative from a frustrated academic. Somehow the three threads are kept more or less balanced for most of the length of the novel. A curiosity. (  ) stevepugh | Aug 12, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 037540340X, Hardcover)The Road to Mars is the second novel by Eric Idle--yes, that Eric Idle, the guy from Monty Python's Flying Circus. No, the book isn't like a Monty Python skit (and a good thing too, since silly sketches are no basis for a successful novel). Yes, Monty Python is mentioned in the book, but the self-referentiality is blessedly confined to two paragraphs. Yes, The Road to Mars is funny. It's also genuine science fiction. And it's satirical, sharply characterized, well-written, thoughtful, fun, and more complex than you'd expect from its picaresque structure, in which a stand-up-comedian odd couple and their robot knock around the outer planets in search of decent gigs. Well, Alex and Lewis are looking for work (and sex); their android, Carlton, unfazed by his own irony impairment, is trying to write a thesis about comedy. The trio quickly find themselves mixed up with a mysterious beauty, a famous diva, the captain of the solar cruise ship Princess Di, and a band of terrorists determined to blow up Mars.In addition to The Road to Mars and Monty Python scripts, Eric Idle is the author of the SF/fantasy novel Hello Sailor (1975), the play Pass the Butler (1982), and the children's book The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat. --Cynthia Ward (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:23 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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