The Fifth Man

The characters seemed like middle school students. Gonna donate to Goodwill. Also - not really Christian fiction. The only time God is mentioned is when someone wants something. Huh?

The crew has reached its destination Mars after a harrowing near death space trip from earth (see OXYGEN). Now a new survival test begins with the crew trying to live on a planet that makes Antarctica seem like a sauna and no rescue flight possible. Nothing should be able to survive in this frozen inhabitant.The four member crew struggles with the harshness of life while trying to meet NASA's detailed expectations in which every nanosecond is booked. Meanwhile, deeply religious microbial ecologist Dr. Valkerie Jansen finds proof that life once existed on the angry red planet, but swears she has also seen a "fifth man" sabotaging their mission. No one else has seen this ET so Commander Dr. Bob Kaganovski worries that she is cracking up under the strain. Illness has hit the team too in what seems like a War of the Worlds reversal. Martian madness grips the crew, but is that why Bob cannot stop looking at Valkerie while they wonder if infected, can they go home?The second book in John B. Olson, and Randall Ingermanson marvelous Martian mission, THE FIFTH MAN, is a great Christian science fiction thriller that enables the audience to feel they are living on the frozen tundra along with the crew. The exhilarating story line hooks the reader on several levels including the obvious survival adventure and whether THE FIFTH MAN exists or is imagined and if the latter who is sabotaging their chances of enduring the severity. Fans will wonder if bacteria could live on this ice cold orb while applauding the two authors for once again proving that science and religion are compatible.Harriet Klausner

What I liked best about The Fifth Man is that it isn't "from Mars." In fact, I slowly began to recognize Mars, not from anything learned at the NASA Web site (although that is a good place to begin), but from my own life as a child in a cold (sometimes horribly cold) climate, where everything is reduced to surviving the cold. Only life forms equipped to survive a level of cold that is essentially anti-life will make it. Predictably, the four astronauts of the previous book, Oxygen, begin to experience the strain of such a life, now that they have ended up on Mars. They begin to imagine -- or are they imagining? -- that there is a "fifth man" around who is doing terrible things. Could the fifth man be an extraterrestrial? Extraterrestrials might not want Earthlings bashing around Mars. Or are the astronauts slowly going mental under the strain? Think of this: If someone is on Mars, and you suspect that they have gone bush crazy, you cannot just pick them up and fly them out, the way you can fly them out of the Arctic or Antarctic. Can one person's craziness infect all the others? Or is that the answer to all the strange events? Something to think about as you read ... I won't spoil the fun by revealing the ending, but I will say that this story should appeal to sci-fi and mystery buffs alike -- as well as to fans of novels of the North.

I received the Olson / Ingermanson duo's first book, Oxygen, in Christmas of 2001. Regardless of the new Lord of the Rings trilogy I was also given (in a collector's edition platinum-issue cardboard box, plus The Hobbit!), I was inexorably drawn to Oxygen. I finished it quickly, loved the characters, and loved the story.So of course I was blessed to learn that chem/phys whizzes and word wranglers John B. Olson and Randall Ingermanson were already at work cranking out the sequel, The Fifth Man, subtitle: Will they find life on the Red Planet . . . before it finds them?.The Fifth Man could work as a standalone novel; there's no Batman-TV-show-like "We have already seen . . ." prologue near the beginning. Right away, we're on Mars, with the crew of the Ares 10, year 2014, but with today's technology in full action in an actual Mars mission.At first things might seem a little disappointing for Oxygen readers. We know that at the end of the first novel, all the psychological warfare and personal conflicts between the members of the Ares 10 crew was resolved. After all the chaos getting to the Red Planet, everyone had finally learned to cooperate, to trust each other . . . they had a bond.Not so in The Fifth Man. Things are getting a little tight again, and crew members Valkerie Jansen, Bob Kaganovski, Kennedy Hampton and Alexis Ohta are back to fighting. Perhaps they have a good reason. An apparent spacecraft saboteur, a bomb, seeming infections by meteorite bacteria and of course the oxygen shortages were bad enough on the way to Mars. Now it seems that something else inhabits the planet . . . a being, a presence. It's scratching the sides of their buildings, stalking them, it's just out there . . . somewhere.That alone causes enough misgivings for the crew. Then there's Valkerie's declining of Bob's on-Mars, live-on-international-TV marriage proposal. So both of them are at odds. But most disappointing is Kennedy-he's back to being an absolute jerk. Like the crew, I had just begun to like him at the end of Oxygen.But don't think I was disappointed in the novel altogether. Not so. The Fifth Man is undoubtedly even better than its prequel. The Olson / Ingermanson duo have done even more homework for this mission, weaving science facts in with a little knowledge of Martian geography; everything is incredibly realistic. But this is also science fiction with characters you want to like-and I just found Kennedy's behavior depressing.Like one other The Fifth Man reviewer, any readers who expect to see huge tentacles come snaking out of anyplace aren't necessarily going to find them. This is Christian fiction, after all, and many Christ-believers don't hold to the idea of life outside of Earth.(The theology for this is simple: the Earth is the center of God's focus. Postulations about other planetary civilizations and even Narnia-like parallel worlds are interesting, but the Bible says nothing about these. One could say that if there were Martians, for exam

Just to let you know how much I enjoyed The Fifth Man, consider this...I am an avid reader, having read 48 books so far this year. Of these Oxygen and its sequel The Fifth Man have to be my favorites. There have been plenty others I have truly loved but there is a lot to recommend with these two books. Combine adventure, mystery, meticulous research that made the whole Mars mission believable, great character development and a bit of romance, no wonder Oxygen won the 2002 Christy Award. I believe The Fifth Man is better yet.I particularily liked the very human characters, their thoughts revealing fears and insecurities that we all have while they displayed acts of courage. The suspense was intense and the action lively and unpredictable. It contained all the elements of a good story leaving the reader with a craving for more and thinking of the ending long after the final page.Bravo to the two fine writers who are willing to create "real men" characters that are also sensitive and not afraid to reveal their emotions and females who are smart and independant. I look foward to future offerings by Randy Ingermanson and John Olson!