Hugo and Nebula–winner Haldeman infuses this yarn with his teen narrator's intelligent curiosity. Carmen Dula, part of the first human colony on Mars, looks like a typical young adult heroine: distanced from her parents, irritated by her bratty younger sibling and beset by tyrannical colony administrator Dargo Solingen. Then she accidentally discovers real Martians living in an underground city and has to convince Solingen that her story is true. When the Martians reveal a terrible threat to life on Earth, it's up to Carmen and her friends to save the day. Recalling Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars, Haldeman updates the Martian setting while keeping faith in his characters' ability to respond to unexpected challenges.

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Product Description

A novel of the red planet from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of The Accidental Time Machine and Old Twentieth.

Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime—they’re going to Mars.

Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebel against. And when she ventures out into the bleak Mars landscape alone one night, a simple accident leads her to the edge of death until she is saved by an angel—an angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad, and a message for the newly arrived human inhabitants of Mars:

We were here first.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #363942 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hugo and Nebula–winner Haldeman infuses this yarn with his teen narrator's intelligent curiosity. Carmen Dula, part of the first human colony on Mars, looks like a typical young adult heroine: distanced from her parents, irritated by her bratty younger sibling and beset by tyrannical colony administrator Dargo Solingen. Then she accidentally discovers real Martians living in an underground city and has to convince Solingen that her story is true. When the Martians reveal a terrible threat to life on Earth, it's up to Carmen and her friends to save the day. Recalling Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars, Haldeman updates the Martian setting while keeping faith in his characters' ability to respond to unexpected challenges. (Aug.)
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From Booklist
The career path of recent high-school graduate Carmen Dula takes an adventurous turn when her family wins a lottery that sends them to the first human settlement on Mars. After an alternately tedious and exhilarating six-month journey, Carmen gets her first taste of living under a crimson sky while butting heads with authoritarian colony leader Dargo. In fact, it’s a fateful run-in with Dargo that prompts Carmen’s rebellious solo walk on the Martian surface and near-fatal plunge into an underground cavern. Her unimaginable savior is a multilimbed, potato-headed creature that has apparently been living with his brethren under the Martian surface for untold millennia. When the astonishment of first contact gives way to an orgy of study by the colony’s xenobiologists, a new shock presents itself—the Martians are the artificial creation of a distant alien race dubbed the Others, to whose universe humans are definitely not welcome. As one of sf’s most consistently inventive storytellers, Haldeman gets bountiful mileage out of this ingenious blend of Martian exploration and extraterrestrial anthropology. --Carl Hays

Review
“If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.”
—Stephen King

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Customer Reviews

Haldeman Takes A Risk....and Succeeds!
Certainly, none of us suspected that there was a 19-year old woman living inside Joe Haldeman, but one has emerged in his latest novel. Perhaps given his contact with college students at MIT, he has chosen to write his latest novel from the perspective of a 19-year old woman. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly given Mr. Haldeman's talent, he does a pretty good job of it. The current novel is classic science fiction and feels a bit retro in flavor hearkening back to earlier decades, but incorporating modern sensibilities.

Marsbound is an engaging novel told entirely as a first-person narrative. It is not a long novel (the one constant in ALL Haldeman novels is his compact writing style), but it is complete and will leave the reader satisfied. As with most of his novels, Marsbound is a writing exercise. Haldeman constantly tries new things in his writing and is not formulaic. You never know what to expect when you open one of his books. Some of his experiments in writing work better than others, but the journey is always fascinating. I enjoyed the current novel and highly recommend it.

A great read
I've always loved the subtle style Joe Haldeman incorporates into his works. The references to other sci-fi literature and the subtle humor every few pages kept my as amused as the story, which unfolded at a nice pace.
From a quadriped who expresses concern about humans standing on two "unsteady" legs to an administrative character as hated to me as Malfoy in Harry Potter, every moment was richly developed into a very plausible and interesting view of the future.
What makes Haldeman's works so interesting is that they are told so matter of factly--referring to future events that the reader does not know about as if we do (but with the understanding that the consequences of historic events play themselves out over time and that is universal)--and in a way told so that the near future is just that. There could possibly be a space elevator at some point, and if not a Hilton in orbit, what other hotel chain would beat them out? (hopefully not something like the "super 8").
A good, strong read if you're looking for a nice escape and a vivid story about the first colonists on Mars, and the inane tendencies of human interaction.

Once again he delivers
About five pages into MARSBOUND I suddenly realized how much I missed "old school" Science Fiction. I think Haldeman is pretty brave** to tackle some of the most covered ground in the genre: humans going to Mars and finding, well, Martians. If you told me last year I would not only be reading such a book but tearing through the pages to finish it in one sitting I wouldn't have believed you. I'm not sure many others could have pulled it off but Haldeman revitalizes a classic theme all the while producing something undeniably his.

I think MARSBOUND compares favorable to his classic WORLDS and AFAIK this is also the start of a trilogy (and incidentally it also has a female protagonist). It's a fun story, well written, well paced, and has just enough real science to keep the story grounded. I also appreciate that Haldeman deftly avoiding obvious "plot twists" something so many of the "epic" science fiction and fantasy novelist of today can't.


It's a great story and well worth your time. Haldeman fans will love it and it's not a bad place for people new to him to start.

**Okay writing a time machine novel seemed pretty brave too. But Mars? No that really takes balls.