Mars, Inc., Ben Bova
Mars, Inc., Ben Bova
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

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) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008.Dr. Bova was President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction’s Hugo Award six times. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more.In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and a multiaward-winning narrator, named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices.


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