The waters of Venus

As promised, here is the review of one of my latest acquisitions from the book store. I must admit, I quite like S. M. Stirling's style and he creates very believable worlds and crafts stories that keep you engrossed and entertained. This one, 'The Sky People', is no exception. In the bad old days of planetary science, it was thought that our 'sister' planet of Venus was at an earlier stage of development and was much like Earth during the last age of the dinosaurs and that the clouds shrouding the planet were composed of water vapor. Boy, were we ever wrong about that! Venus is probably the nearest to Hell that we can imagine with it's heat high enough to melt lead, sulfuric acid atmosphere and pressures to crush us into little puddles of goo in an instant. Obviously not a place to visit and very unlikely that man will ever set foot there. But....what if? In this book, Venus is just as we imagined and it is a lush water-heavy world with a complex ecosystem including dinosaurs, mammals and humanoids. This discovery creates a renewed space race between the US and the Soviets resulting in colonies by the 1980's and a more peaceful Earth. The story is very much a homage to all those wonderful pulp writers and is a great romp though a richly detailed environment. Here we have heroes and quests and Indiana Jones style discoveries that keep you turning the pages just to see what's next. The sequel to this book, 'In the Court of the Crimson King', takes us to Mars, where the same idea of making the imagined world real is continued. Here, Mars is a place with a more advanced civilization than ours but in severe decline. I must get  a copy - when it's cheap of course. This book only cost me $6.99 for the hardback!