Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Joe Haldeman has done it again. His brilliant Forever War seemed a counterpoint to Heinlein's Starship Troopers, a sort of pointed "here, this is what war is really like" riposte (although I have heard he says that is not true at all; that in fact he's a big Heinlein fan). Be that as it may, it is hard to read those books without thinking one is an answer to the other one.

Haldeman must be a Heinlein fan however, because this time he has written his version of Podkayne of Mars. Marsbound has the same chatty tone of a teenage girl traveling with her younger brother; it's the story of her travels and what it is like on board the various ships and her various destinations. I was a little disappointed that Card never pulled an atomic bomb out of his luggage, but he turned out to be cooler than Podkayne's younger brother. There are other changes too, changes I'm certain Heinlein would appreciate. There's more sex in this tale, and our heroine Carmen is allowed to grow up - unlike poor Poddy. Whether she ultimately meets the same fate as Podkayne, however, this review does not say!

On its own, this was a light, fast read; a beach read for science fiction fans. Haldeman, as always, does his best to get the science right and make the technology he describes sound as realistic as possible. His Mars colony, for example, doesn't sound as fun as one built by Nadia Chernyshevski, but this Mars does sound more like what we could expect in the near future if we managed a colony there.

This is not Haldeman's best by any means. It's not The Forever War, and it's not even the Accidental Time Machine. It is fun, and if you are a Haldeman fan - or even a Heinlein fan - you will probably enjoy it.