Book details of 'Moving Mars'

Title	Moving Mars
Author(s)	Greg Bear
ISBN	031285515X
Language	English
Published	November 1993
Publisher	Tor Books

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
In this 1995 Nebula Award-winning novel, a revolution is transforming the formerly passive Earth-colony of Mars. While opposing political factions on Mars battle for the support of colonists, scientists make a staggering scientific breakthrough that at once fuels the conflict and creates a united Mars front, as the technically superior Earth tries to take credit for it. Backed against a wall, colonial leaders are forced to make a monumental decision that changes the future of Mars forever.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
One science fiction author has stated that the purpose of science fiction is to use science to allow the story to examine ideas that society can't or won't examine in real life. You take a story, he said, and set it in the future, or on another planet, and therefore discuss, at a safe remove, things that are too close for us. In one sense, this is exactly what "Moving Mars" does. The story, generally about a clash of cultures (I think), takes place across planets, rather than across borders. The "trigger event" in the conflict is a new scientific discovery. So far, science is important to the story. So far, and no further. This story could as easily be told with no technical involvement whatsoever. The planets could be countries, the trigger could be an economic advantage. Nanotechnology, advanced "pen" computing, robots, direct experience, virtual reality, and weird "cemeteries" where the rich can extend their lives at the expense of being physically caged, all make appearances, but are in no way essential to the book or its tone. Some technologies appear only once, in scenes with only the most tenuous connection to the story and which appear to be no more than excuses to introduce the high tech item. Indeed, much of the technology is presented with little feel for the implications. Nanotechnology is used throughout the book, and yet with no sense of either the drastic changes that it would make in terms of the means and control of production, or of the limitations and costs of such systems in energy and time. At one point in the book, Mars is unable to produce advance neural net computers - "thinkers" - and yet, when they are really important to Bear's plot, a small, ill-equipped group is able to ramp up production of the most elite of these units. The "evolvons" of the book are defined as viral computer programs, but act more like logic bombs. (Two units are cleared of evolvons in the course of the book and yet thousands of suspected units are not even checked. Again, this astounding naivete and the appalling outcome seem to be central to Bear's view of the necessary plot.) "Moving Mars" does deal with some of the social and political aspects of sudden advantages, and these can be applied to technical advances. For the rest, however, the technologies are mere SF wallpaper. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994
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