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Lewis Shiner's stunning science fiction debut. After the world's governments collapsed, the corporations took control. Houston's Pulsystems has sent an expedition to the lost Martian colony of Frontera to search for survivors, but Reese, aging hero of the US space program, knows better. The colonists are not only alive; they have discovered a secret so devastating that the new rulers of Earth will stop at nothing to own it. But none of them have reckoned with Kane, tortured veteran of the show more corporate wars, whose hallucinatory voices are urging him to complete an ancient cycle of heroism and alter the destiny of the human race. show less

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4 reviews
The difficulties of life on mars. Living on mars is hard enough without nationalism getting in the way of humans standing on each other's toes. BUt even in this post-nation era when the world is dominated by mega-corps (not as badly as it could be), there are still national rivalries which just seemed odd. It would have been more believable to have people actually corporate-loyal rather than reverting to 60s anti-soviet agendas.

A mish-mash team of hand-picked corporate personel who still remember a bit of their NASA training before the world went to riot, end up on a spacecraft attempting to land oat the believed foresaken colony sites on Mars. Only the naive however haven't learnt that the colony is still alive. Apparently some young show more genetically mutated geniuses have developed a couple of neat technological tricks and the company wants them. But as ever another team land close by. The colony wants nothing to do with any of them. Everything else proceeds as you might expect.

Lots of jumping around between characters which doesn't really achieve anything. Not just between the colony but within the spaceship teams too. Motivation lacks for any of their actions really, despite some of them being totally manipulated - having the colony chief be a bit mad just because doesn't help either.

Not a bad concept of looking at the hardships space exploration is going to pose, but not brilliantly executed.
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½
Solide SciFi. Erde kaputt, Konzerne herrschen. Die Kolonie auf dem Mars aus besseren Zeiten hat überlebt. Und die mutierten Kinder haben die Physik revolutioniert. Konzerne jagen sie. Happy End. Würde ich gern als Film sehen.

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Forced Exposure
83 works; 1 member

Author Information

Picture of author.
110+ Works 1,586 Members

All Editions

Roberts, Anthony (Cover artist)

Some Editions

DiFate, Vincent (Cover artist)

Awards and Honors

Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1984

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, Science Fiction
DDC/MDS
813.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English1900-19991945-1999
LCC
PS3569 .H4957 .F76Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1961-
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Statistics

Members
242
Popularity
134,281
Reviews
4
Rating
(3.21)
Languages
English, German
Media
Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
ISBNs
12
ASINs
4