Rainbow Mars

March 1, 1999
Time, space and a reader's patience become vertiginously distorted in this dizzying compilation of six linked tales written over a 30-year time span by Niven (Destiny's Road, etc.), winner of five Hugo Awards. Five short stories written between 1969 and 1973 follow the title novella (copyrighted 1999) but relate events predating its Martian adventures of Niven's klutzy time-traveler hero, Hanville Svetz, as he scours previous centuries for animals extinct in his environmentally devastated 2300 A.D. Earth. When Svetz's Institute for Temporal Research is transferred to the Bureau for Sky Domains, the resulting power struggle launches Svetz into Mars's inhabited past, accompanied by two lissome, stretch-suited astronauts, Zeera and Miya, on a mission to save Earth from Mars's dried-up fate and to colonize the solar system. After surviving Miya's lusty libido and multitudinous hokey alien monsters, Svetz solves one of the chief mysteries of Niven's universe, that of the Beanstalk stretching from earth to the heavens. Occasional satiric sparks light up Svetz's perils, but internal consistency is weak, while a generally gluey pace retards Niven's intended flights of imagination.

February 15, 1999
As a member of the Institute of Temporal Research, Hanville Svetz explores Earth's past on a regular basis--to satisfy the whims of the current secretary-general (whomever he might happen to be). From retrieving the seeds of a Martian world-tree to capturing a "horse" from preatomic Earth, Svetz risks life, limb, and sanity in the pursuit of his duty. Sf veteran Niven's (Destiny's Road, LJ 6/15/97) latest effort combines an original novella and five related short stories revolving around the concept of time travel--with a fantastic twist. Known for his hard science and imaginative storytelling, Niven now illustrates his skill at offbeat seriocomic sf in a story cycle recommended for most sf collections.

March 1, 1999
Niven's lighthearted latest features his time-traveling environmental agent, Hanville Svetz, fighting for the ecological salvation of a nearly ruined Earth. The novel takes a poke at Kim Stanley Robinson's very successful Martian trilogy with its title and romps on from there. Sent to save the Martian ecology to allow refugees from Earth to settle there, Svetz and a female astronaut find it inhabited by every sort of Martian ever imagined by sf writers. Furthermore, a gigantic, semisapient, interstellar-space-traveling tree is stripping it of resources. The agents try to rescue Mars and discover they are close to dooming Earth by doing so. They end up in frantic flight from hostile Martians and Portuguese conquistadors. Niven's tongue seems to have been firmly in his cheek during the writing, which may appeal more to hardened fans than to novices. But the newbies can catch up, for five earlier Svetz short stories, including the classic "Flight of the Horse" (1969), are appended for them to trace Niven's growth as a humorist. ((Reviewed March 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)