The Mars Mystery

"The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning." Thus, the protagonist of this short story collection's last entry, "Reflection of a Young Man in Balance," sums up what he has come to learn about love, and life in general. However, these could also be the words of almost any character in any of the other tales told here: Admittedly or unadmittedly, they are searching for something, for a defining point or experience in life, and all of them see their lives profoundly unbalanced by that experience. Taking "love and its conditions on the night of March 19, 1929" as his point of reference and as a link between the otherwise unconnected eight stories, Peter Hoeg takes his readers from Denmark around the world to Paris, Lisbon and Central Africa. In a language and in settings somewhere between Dinesen (the obvious comparison), Conrad, Hemingway, Wilde and Poe, the author of "Smilla's Sense of Snow" takes a look at the human condition, society in the first decades of the 20th century, and the dichotomy of science and sentiment, experience and emotion, logic and love. In "Journey into a Dark Heart," a historic train ride in Central Africa turns into a life-changing adventure for a young, disheartened mathematician, with travel companions such as German war hero General von Lettow-Vorbeck, traveling writer Joseph Korzeniowski (a/k/a Joseph Conrad, whose "Heart of Darkness" provides the obvious inspiration for more than just the story's title) and an African servant girl with her own surprise in store for the three men. "Hommage a Bournonville" finds a young Danish ballet dancer on a tiny boat in Lisbon's harbor, telling the story of his lost love to a dervish of Turkish origin cast together with him by fate. In "The Verdict on the Right Honorable Ignatio Landstad Rasker, Lord Chief Justice," a father chooses the occasion of his son's marriage to pass on the story how his own father, a renowned jurist and civil servant, faced up to the demons he had suppressed for most of his life, and which his family thereafter promptly continued to suppress. "An Experiment on the Constancy of Love" juxtaposes a young woman of means and great beauty, an aspiring scientist with a sheer endless disdain for life, and the man who becomes her suitor from their first childhood meeting on and follows her from Paris to Denmark and back to Paris, until their ambitions and sentiments collide head-on in a fatal experiment she has devised. "Portrait of the Avant-Garde" takes a successful, ambitious painter with ties to the rising Nazis to a nightly boat trip into self-discovery off a remote Danish island. "Pity for the Children of Vaden Town" is the story of a city's self-elected utter isolation, and of the pied piper who has come to the town children's rescue - with abounding reminiscences to the Grimm Brothers, Robert Browning, Hans Chr

I've read literally 100s of books in my life but this was with ease one of the most fascinating ones I've laid my eyes on. I could start right off by praising Hancock's research and the integrity of his sources, but actually, before any of that, I think special credit should be given to this man's authorship. Indeed that's in my mind the biggest asset of this book: that it's a definitive "cantputdowner". The only way i could see someone not being thoroughly engulfed in this marvelous work of a book is if he's either brainwashed beyond repair and refuses to hear anything entertaining notions that go against the "programm" in his mind, or, worse still, if someone is basically cerebrally pulseless. Hancock spreads out a super convincing, mm, not so much theory, but argument. At no point in his book, again to his credit, does he dogmatically claim "look, there WAS intelligent life on Mars at some point" but he does claim that the evidence is overwhelming towards such a direction and that the rather bizzare attitude of Nasa about this might be actually confirming this or at the very least fuels suspicion to the max. The premise here is the stunning "monuments" in the area of Cydonia and the implications arising from this. It's not only the well known (???) face on Mars but also the hexagonal eerily symmetrical pyramids and other such phenomena that have tell-tale signs of artificiality about them. Even though i've read quite some, especially on the net, about the "Face" i found that there was actually an ocean of data i was totally unaware of. Hancock goes on a lenghty but very pleasant to read diatribe about those constructions but where it gets immensely interesting is when he tackles the more-than-strange behavior of Nasa about the whole issue. NASA to put it in a nutshell has been basically fronting the theory that not only the winds are particularly talented out on Mars but that they are also selectively talented as they seem to be creating things in Cydonia and only. That might be laughable enough one would think, but their overall attitude to public demand for further and detailed investigation on these anomalies so the matter could (?) be put to rest has been borderline conspiratorial. The world has either had to deal with outright refusals or with grainy photos that Nasa releases in an apparent effort to conceal what really? Questiosn that scream for immediate answers. NASA general politics are also discussed in the process and, well, they dont seem exactly "crystal-clean" stuff to put it extremely mildly. But by then you'd only be half way through the book: the latter half is the one that -incredibly-manages to capture the imagination even more albeit in a macabre and cosmically scary way. If the death of Mars as all evidence overwhelmingly suggests came from a cosmic bombardment of comets or fragments thereof what are the implications to us here? Especially since the spectacular "atatck" of comet Levy-Shoemaker on Jupi

Excellent book, All I can say is that if your interested in Mars or the true or possible history of man this book will bend your mind in a totally new directions. A Very cool book, a very cool edition to any personal library.

I have finished reading the book a few weeks ago and now that all the emotions have settled down, the impression that is left is of a highly entertaining and informative book.I might not agree with 100 per cent of all what Mr. Hancock writes, but most of the evidence that he presents can not be ignored.As a person with an open mind I recommend this work of art and science to everyone who is willing to give a chance to the ideas presented in it.

Graham Hancock pulls no punches when Nasa dupes the Americanpublic (NASA is under military charter not civilian like most peoplebelieve)in a deliberate cover up of the Mars face photos. He systematically reveals the precise alignments of structures on Mars (as he did in "Heavens Mirror"), the evidence of a Martian cataclysm, and the NASA expose'. Anyone in doubt (UFO'S & government cover-up's) should read the thoroughly documented/researched books by Timothy Good, Linda Moulton Howe ("High Strangeness"),Stanton Friedman ("Top Secret Majic"), and David M. Jacobs ("The Threat") if they want to know the "real" truth.