Mars Blanche Ou La Liberation De L'Esprit

_White Mars_ is, as its title implies, Brian Aldiss's considered reply to the

novels _Red Mars_ , _Green Mars_ , and _Blue Mars_ , in which Kim Stanley

Robinson portrayed the terraforming of our neighbor planet and the creation of

a utopian society there. Aldiss disapproves of the whole idea of meddling with

another world in the first place, and, more genially, of the melodrama

surrounding the creation of Robinson's utopia. Where Robinson's Martians get

their chance after near-genocidal warfare on Mars and environmental disaster

on Earth, Aldiss's get theirs as the result of a corruption- and scandal-

fuelled recession in which supplies for the Martian colony are cut. This is,

unusually for the shrewd and sometimes cynical Aldiss, a novel with a hero--

Tom Jeffreys, the Thomas Jefferson of this Martian revolution:

> His manner was less severe than well controlled. He showed great

determination for the cause in which he believed, yet softened it with humour,

which sprang from an innate modesty. He was not above self-mockery. In his

speech he adopted the manner of a plain man, yet what he said was often

unexpected.

This is a very English, very urbane book, in which there is an awful lot of

talk--about utopia, about consciousness, about subatomic particles; Aldiss

collaborated on parts of the book with mathematician and physicist Roger

Penrose. It is a wise book and a knowledgeable one. _\--Roz Kaveney,

Amazon.co.uk_