Finches of Mars

June 1, 2015
Those expecting a feather in the cap of Aldiss’s long and distinguished writing career will be disappointed by the utter failure of this disjointed series of vignettes, set in a vague near future. It’s meant to tell the tale of a major problem facing a Martian colony: the colonists’ inability to produce live offspring. As a narrative, it lacks cohesion, jumping back and forth between Earth and Mars and among characters with little apparent point. Aldiss belabors the tragedies of the stillbirths and the seemingly endless wars that have embroiled the entire Earth (but that don’t seem to personally affect any of the characters). The story is further clogged by scientifically nonsensical elements—with no mention of terraforming, the pressure and outdoor temperatures on Mars are now comfortable—and wrapped up with a textbook case of deus ex machina that renders the entirety of the story utterly irrelevant.

July 1, 2015

Sf grandmaster Aldiss carries on his tradition of readable hard speculative fiction in this brief yet thoughtful exploration of life on Mars. The Martian colonists are happy to have escaped the environmentally devastated Earth, yet they struggle to attain independence on the red planet. Most important, they are unable to procreate successfully, a matter that becomes urgent as the situation back home deteriorates. VERDICT Exploring many of the same issues as the late Kage Baker's Empress of Mars, this novel offers a serious take on life after Earth that is likely to appeal to fans of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy. With a more limited readership than Andy Weir's recent blockbuster The Martian, this is best for fans of Aldiss and classic sf.--JM

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Aldiss, who's been writing science fiction (along with nongenre material) for about 70 years, has said this will be his final SF novel. It may not be his crowning achievementhis most influential, genre-defining work came in the 1960s and '70sbut if the book really does mark the end of his SF career, he's going out with a bang. The opening of the book suggests a Mars-colonization storyKim Stanley Robinson territorywith a group of colonists trying to establish a self-sufficient community. But soon the author's true intent becomes apparent, for there is a compelling mystery element here: it's been 10 years since humans went to Mars, and in that time none of the children born on the Red Planet has survived. Desperate to figure out why, the colonists are forced to confront a disheartening reality: back on Earth, not many people seem to care what happens to the Mars colony. The survival of the colony could depend on the sacrifices the colonists are forced to make. With shifting narrative focus and multiple chronologies, the novel has an experimental feel to it (recalling Aldiss' work from decades ago, when he was most notably playing with prose styles and story structures), but it also works very well as a suspenseful genre-bending combination of straight SF and mystery. Fans of Aldiss' lengthy body of work will consider this one required reading, and it could introduce a new generation of readers to his work. A must for science-fiction collections large and small.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)