Martian Way

It's the first time I'm buying books online. I was really shocked that this is how an old book look like. It looked brand new. I'll probably start buying online more

I love Asimov, but this has got to be his best collection of shorts and the title story is the best of the lot. What a great read. It has everything that we love about Asimov, science fiction, and storytelling.

This is a collection of three novellas and one short story: "The Martian Way" (1952) is a story about colonists on Mars who must find another source of water since a Joseph McCarthy-like polititian on Earth is threatening to cut off Earth's supply of water for Mars (the story came out right during the McCarthy problems in the U.S. Senate). "Youth" (1952) is about two pre-teenagers in a post nuclear-war world who come across some small "animals" that they wish to take to the circus not realizing that they are intelligent beings who had come to make contact with the youths' fathers. "The Deep" (1952) is focused on beings who live in the interior of a planet (their sun is dying and the inhabitants keep migrating deeper into their planet for the planet's natural heat) whose social structure considers maternal love to be a taboo and degenerate. They are forced to come into contact with beings (Earthlings) who they regard as obscene due to the presence of this emotion. "Sucker Bait" (1954) is centered on a world having two suns (the two suns and the planet form a Trojan orbital system of an equilateral triangle). A previous colony of a thousand members had died a hundred years earlier and a new expedition has been sent to discover why. Asimov also suggests in this story that scientists in the future may become so specialized that they will be unaware of basic facts anywhere outside of their specific field. I really doubt that. Anyone who has a love of science has a joy of all science. That will be true in the future as well (However, there will always be people [in any field] who are narrow minded.).

This is a terrific book. Asimov gives us a realistic dilema with technology, that at least from my "arm-chair" physicist point-of veiw makes sence. Going from point A to point B in months makes sence as it's unlikly we'll be warping around when all we've got is a martian colony. Using water for fuel seems plausible (since they use hydrogen and O2 already)and other problems (such as the expedition running out of drinking water) also make sense, seem plausible and are dealt with realistically. One exciting scene is ripped off by the movie Armageddon when the miners deal with what happens when two asteroids collide, and there's one more good scene where.... well, I'll let you read it.

Still some of the best science fiction stories I have ever read. Asimov definitely takes the cake.