Venus

April 3, 2000
In 1993 Bova took readers to Mars and himself onto bestseller lists. Last year's A Return to Mars also sold well. So a narrative about manned exploration of Venus seems an obvious step for this popular author, and Bova's new novel will indeed please his fans, as it offers his usual mix of solid science, serviceable (if sketchy) characterizations and lickety-split plotting with plenty of cliff-hangers. It's late in the 21st century. Three years ago, the first human to visit Venus, Alex Humphries, son of decadent multibillionaire Martin, never returned. Now Martin is offering $10 billion to whoever will retrieve Alex's remains from that planet's hellish surface. Racing against one another for the prize are Alex's aimless younger brother, Van (the story's narrator, who's just been disowned by Martin), and legendary asteroid-miner Lars Fuchs, who detests Martin as much as Martin detests Van. Van's expedition goes bad early on; high above Venus, colonies of alien "bugs" eat through his ship's hull, forcing him and his crew--several of whom die--to seek refuge on Fuchs's stronger craft. Personality conflicts rampage there, particularly between domineering Fuchs and mild-mannered Van, and there's romantic tension between a young female biologist and Van. The real drama, however, arises from revelations that explain the roots of the hatreds among Van, Fuchs and Martin, and during Van's dangerous descent in a small ship to the surface of Venus, which Bova depicts with strong visual imagery as a deadly inferno--albeit one inhabited by an unexpected life form. This novel clicks along only predictably as Van's coming of age tale, but as a voyage to an unknown world, it excels.

April 15, 2000
When business tycoon Martin Humphries offers a fortune to the first person to travel to Venus to recover the remains of his son Alex, lost on the planet two years earlier, two men take him up on his offer. One is his frail second son Van; the other is his rival and greatest enemy. Bova's latest novel not only captures the alien and hostile Venusian atmosphere but also manages to tell a top-notch adventure story of broken dreams and lifelong hatreds that match the turbulence of Venus itself. The author's excellence at combining hard science with believable characters and an attention-grabbing plot makes him one of the genre's most accessible and entertaining storytellers. Recommended for sf collections.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2000
A leading light of hard sf and space advocacy turns his attention from Mars to Venus. Van Humphries is the sickly and despised second son of a billionaire whose elder and favorite son died in the first attempt to land a man on Venus. In competition with another expedition, undertaken by his late mother's first husband, he sets out to recover his brother's body. Bova's subordination of characterization to setting and hardware works well because it is subordinated to the depiction of a worthy antagonist--the terrifying environment of Venus' surface, where the atmospheric pressure is hundreds of pounds per square inch, temperatures are high enough to melt lead, visibility is nonexistent, the weather starts at vile and gets worse, and the air is, when not actively poisonous, still totally unbreathable. Altogether, the place is a fine setting for a man-versus-environment tale. Hard sf fans in general and Bova fans in particular will generate strong demand for his highly respectable new effort. ((Reviewed April 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)