BKMOVMRS.RVW  940705
 
%A   Bear
%C   175 Fifth Avenue/
     New York, NY  10010
%D   1993
%G   0-312-85515-X
%I   Tor/Tom Dougherty
%O   U$23.95
%T   Moving Mars
 
One science fiction author has stated that the purpose of science fiction is to
use science to allow the story to examine ideas that society can't or won't
examine in real life.  You take a story, he said, and set it in the future, or
on another planet, and therefore discuss, at a safe remove, things that are too
close for us.
 
In one sense, this is exactly what "Moving Mars" does.  The story, generally
about a clash of cultures (I think), takes place across planets, rather than
across borders.  The "trigger event" in the conflict is a new scientific
discovery.  So far, science is important to the story.
 
So far, and no further.  This story could as easily be told with no technical
involvement whatsoever.  The planets could be countries, the trigger could be
an economic advantage.  Nanotechnology, advanced "pen" computing, robots,
direct experience, virtual reality, and weird "cemeteries" where the rich can
extend their lives at the expense of being physically caged, all make
appearances, but are in no way essential to the book or its tone.  Some
technologies appear only once, in scenes with only the most tenuous connection
to the story and which appear to be no more than excuses to introduce the high
tech item.
 
Indeed, much of the technology is presented with little feel for the
implications.  Nanotechnology is used throughout the book, and yet with no
sense of either the drastic changes that it would make in terms of the means
and control of production, or of the limitations and costs of such systems in
energy and time.  At one point in the book, Mars is unable to produce advance
neural net computers - "thinkers" -  and yet, when they are really important to
Bear's plot, a small, ill-equipped group is able to ramp up production of the
most elite of these units.  The "evolvons" of the book are defined as viral
computer programs, but act more like logic bombs.  (Two units are cleared of
evolvons in the course of the book and yet thousands of suspected units are not
even checked.  Again, this astounding naivete and the appalling outcome seem to
be central to Bear's view of the necessary plot.)
 
"Moving Mars" does deal with some of the social and political aspects of sudden
advantages, and these can be applied to technical advances.  For the rest,
however, the technologies are mere SF wallpaper.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994   BKMOVMRS.RVW  940705

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Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733
Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Sept. '94) Springer-Verlag