I feel like the biggest blasphemer for DNFing a Clarke novel, but it's such a snooze fest. It may be that the timing isn't right, and I might give it a second chance when I'm in a different mood.

C. Clarke'tan yine Güneş Sistemi içinde geçen realistik bir bilimkurgu, her ne kadar içerdiği Marslılar biraz işi bozsa da.. Yine de bir Mars Yıllıkları değil elbette, zaten o kadar hümanist olmasını beklemiyorum hiçbir BK'nın. Clarke'ın bilime daha dayalı, fanteziye daha az yer veren bu stilini seviyorum.

Bir de içindeki şu güzel pasajı aktarmak gerek, hem güzel olduğu için, hem de Clarke'ın bundan yaklaşık 25 yıl sonra yazdığı "İmparator Dünya"ya nasıl hazırlandığını görmek için:

"...Çok büyüktü ve sanki kollarını iyice açıp da durursan, parmak uçlarınla kenarlarını tutabilecek gibiydin. Hiçbirimiz onu seyretmekten bıkmamıştık. O kadar hızlı dönüyordu ki, biçimi sürekli değişiyordu. Ve bu sırada renklerin en güzel kombinasyonunu; yeşilleri, kahverengileri ve sarıları görmek olanaklıydı. İnsanın ondan gözlerini kaçırabilmesi imkansızdı. Görünmez olduğunda bile onu görmek olanaklı gibi çünkü yıldızların arasında büyük bir boşluk oluşuyor. Tekrar Satürn'e gitmek istediğimi söylesem şaşırır mısınız? Bu kez ona iyice yaklaşmak isterim, yani bin kilometre yakınına kadar yaklaşmak..."

Ayrıca Total Recall'un bu kitaptan da esinlenmiş olmasına ne demeli...

This book is wish-fulfillment science fiction about traveling to space and to another planet. And not just anybody's wish, I think the writer's himself. It was the only thing I could think when I read the book. "This is what he dreams when he shut his eyes." To experience space travel and colonize another planet, Mars, as it will be the first planet humans can actually go to and most probably live on. Arthur C. Clarke's dream and love for space are vivid in the detailed description of spaceflight, the grew, and the feelings of the main character, a science fiction writer Gibson. I'm not sure if you can read this book as a story, (of course, you can,) but something is lost if you expect the normal story arch or heroic quest to space. This is more like an exploration of what it would take to get to Mars and what obstacles and wonders you would experience on the way, and what would you see when standing on the sands of Mars.

This book is inspirational and heartwarming, but I understand the complaints that it is not interesting, that it feels like a textbook. I don't mind that. I love when the writer shows his passion for the details. This is something you can expect from Arthur C. Clarke's books, there are always scientific facts backing up his claims, and that, in my opinion, is good sci-fi. But what I mind is that I couldn't get past the feeling that this book was written to the writer himself. That I was just a looker, trying to search meaning why this book should matter to me? After reading the book, I have to conclude the experience was this weird dissonance between inspiration and meaningless. 

The Sands of Mars is a scientific poem for space travel. A dream, you can either jump into or watch as it floats by, and feel nothing. It is your choice to join into the emotion behind the words.

When i picked this book up i wasn’t sure if it’d be dated or even my scene.. i bought it mostly for the cover art.

Right off the bat the characters felt generic, as though no one mattered aside from our protagonist. Slowly though, this self centred author changes and his trip for inspiration becomes a far more heartwarming scene.

Following a character i thought i’d hate discover his son and attempt to build a relationship in less than normal circumstances is something i didn’t imagine could fill me with such sentiment.


The real reason i’m writing this review is actually for Squeak. The real hero of the Sands Of Mars and i love them

I feel like the biggest blasphemer for DNFing a Clarke novel, but it's such a snooze fest. It may be that the timing isn't right, and I might give it a second chance when I'm in a different mood.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2699804.html

a Clarke novel that I definitely had not read before - and I thought I had raided the Belfast library system of its entire stock of his works when I was a teenager. Though bound second in my omnibus volume, it was Clarke's first published novel, dating from 1951. It's set a few years after the establishment of a Mars colony; the journalist protagonist (who is also an sf novelist) is being sent as what we'd now call an embedded member of the team, to write up what is going on in humanity's new outpost; the details of how journalism is technically done have dated far more than the rest of the book - there is a loving detailed description of a fax machine, an unimaginable technological advance in 1951, archaic for us in 2016. It's also a rare case of Clarke attempting to inject some emotional energy into his story, with one of the crew members turning out to be the protagonist's long-lost biological son, who then falls in love with the only girl on Mars; characteristically, having laid out the situation, the author doesn't dwell on it (and didn't really try this kind of narrative trick again in his career). He's on much more comfortable political ground when the discovery of a new form of Martian life upsets the balance of relations between the Martian base and its Earth master's, though here again his viewpoint is firmly rooted in what's good for the human colonists rather than the indigenous Martians. Still, I enjoyed it, and I'm surprised that this took me decades to track down.