 |
The Thunder ChildScience Fiction and Fantasy |
| |
|
| |
|
|
Book Reviews by Edogawa Ranpo
My own preference is for the plate glass style. I like rip-roaring action adventure novels for the most part, philosophical treatises aren't my cup of tea. But The Heart of Mars is so beautifully written, and so intriguing, that I was drawn into it despite myself. (Although, in my research after finishing the book, I think I drew from it things the author had not intended, but more of that later.)
The narrator, and "detective" of the story is Marl, half-homan and half-Nutian, biologically, but all-Nutian, mentally. "Survive and contribute," is his mantra, and the mantra of the Nutians. The first half of this narrative is all about world-building, as Marl explains what is known about how humans used to live on Home (or Earth) before the Return of the Nutian, an amphibian race who saved Earth and its people from the devastation they had wrought via global warming and warfare, and how the Nutians aquaformed Home, as well as other planets and satellites...and how they eventually intend to aquaform Mars. On the Gift Moon Marl meets ElmoLeonard, a Pet (a creature that runs the Moon for the Nutrian, while the cetaceans work it:
The Pets are "more colony than character, more pack than person. Whatever their original or singular disposition, no one has ever seen it, for they are always in some group of furriness, clinging bodies, limbs and heads, which crawl about each other in constant, mutual affection, rubbing and petting themselves in total self-absorption and speaking, when they speak, by a kind of anarchy of mutual agreement, from one mouth or in unison." Creatures, including humans, can be absorbed into the Pet, or detach themselves, as does a woman called L, who acts as Marl's guide while on the Gift Moon. She also accompanies him when he sets out next for the planet Mars...and on this journey, in which they spend most of their time having sex (the details of which are left to the readers imagination) they also find time for L to teach Marl how to write. L was a homan (or human, as she calls herself) from one of the Wild Zones still remaining on Earth, before allowing herself to be aborbed into the Pet ElmoLeonard. On Mars, as on the Gift Moon, there are no Nutrian (or First Nutrian, as the pure bloods are called), but there are many pockets of homans in little fiefdoms...most of them scattered across the land that will shortly be aqua-formed by the Nutrians. Marl learns of a being named Kurtz, and sets out to find him. However, he must navigate amongst many of the human tribes on Mars, from the Young Italians, or Roamins, who spend their days pillaging and their nights drinking and having sex, to the Germans, to the Swiss and the Austrians, always in search of the elusive Kurtz, and learning more about the Nutians...and their Return... than he ever thought possible. Chuck Rosenthal raises interesting philosophical questions in his narrative at the heart of The Heart of Mars (as well as echoes of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness), which give one to think. But, even though we never meet a Nutrian throughout the story, I find them more attractive than the various tribes of humans, who remind me of nothing more than the various native American tribes who fought against the encroaching white man during the era of "The Wild West." They enjoyed fighting each other too much to band together in order to defeat the common enemy - and so were defeated. So it is with the Humans on Mars. They all exist in their own little enclaves - and hate everyone in all the other enclaves, and seem to live only to copulate and kill. I found myself hoping at the end that the Nutrian's Aquaforming of Mars gets completed rather quickly to put an end to all that useless existence. However, that's only my take on these humans, and as I said there are many layers in this narrative. Check it out for yourself. You will take something away from your reading.
|
 Learn more or Buy Now
|
