Mars, Inc., Ben Bova
Mars, Inc., Ben Bova
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
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Mars, Inc.
The Billionaire’s Club

Author: Ben Bova

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 8 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/03/2013


Synopsis

Bova, a six-time Hugo Award winner and past president of the National Space Society, returns to his most popular and bestselling subject: the quest for Mars!How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by budget constrictions, that's for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate power plays, a generous dollop of seduction—both in and out of the boardroom—and money, money, money!Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a "club" of billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. The problem is, these men and women are tough cookies, addicted to a profitable bottom-line and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make somebody else's dreams come true.But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard: he's a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. Still, it's going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage—and get a rocket full of scientists, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.The man for the job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to put humans on Mars—or die trying!

About Ben Bova

Ben Bova (1932–2020), American author of more than one hundred books of science fact and fiction, was awarded posthumously the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. His work earned six Hugo Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and his novel Titan won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of 2006. In his early career, he was a technical editor for Project Vanguard, the United States’s first effort to launch a satellite into space in 1958. He then was a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module. He held the position of president emeritus of the National Space Society and served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director, and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah on December 19, 2013

So should you read Mars, Inc.? Sure. While this might not be SciFi enough for some readers, the ideas that Bova plays with and presents to readers are pretty priceless. Mars, Inc. left me thinking about our space industry and wondering what the future holds for it. I think that is probably the point......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on February 05, 2014

Wasn't really what I was hoping for. It was a much longer version of The Man Who Sold the Moon by Heinlein, without the payoff of the return voyage. It really didn't make me wishing for the return of the Golden Age, and wasn't something that kept me gripped. All in all, an ok read, but I expected mu......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on December 01, 2013

I received an electronic advanced reading copy of this from the publisher through NetGalley. The genre denoted SF is most commonly called science fiction, but some prefer speculative fiction instead. Either way, a precise definition of what constitutes science fiction can be as elusive as defining wh......more

Goodreads review by Tito on October 29, 2021

A fun read. Nothing spectacularly mind-blowing. Kind of a beach-companion book, laden with stereotypes, but also with some fun action and a bit of hard science to keep it interesting.......more

Goodreads review by Nicholas on January 13, 2017

I chose this book because I've read and enjoyed a lot of Bova's other work and expected a good read despite it coming from Baen (A publisher who I tend to avoid for reasons that will become clear). Sadly it soon became obvious that this is not one of Bova's better works. While the idea was intriguin......more


Quotes

“The Hugo winner returns to his most popular subject: the quest for Mars.” Publishers Weekly