The Return

by John Barnes and Buzz Aldrin

Book Overview

ISBN: 0312874243 TITLE: The Return AUTHOR: Aldrin, BuzzEXCERPT: ONE Scott:So how are you planning to top this mission? Are you sending the Pope next time?''''All the reporters laughed. Of course the question wasn''t serious, but it did give me a chance to work in a sound bite that my PR coach had suggested. Eventually, we''ll send everybody. But one step at a time, please.''''Outside, it was seven in the morning on the kind of pleasant, clear Wednesday...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312874243
• ISBN13: 9780312874247
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and thought provoking

I picked up Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes' _The Return_ from a remainder table for $.99. It deserves a better fate than that! Aldrin, a famed astronaut, and Barnes, an established writer, team up here for the second time to tell a story that is interesting, entertaining, important and timely. As I write this, NASA has announced yet another delay in getting our patched-up space shuttles flying again. While robotic spacecraft are sending back new discoveries from Saturn every day, our ability to send humans into space is languishing. Aldrin, of course, is a strong advocate for the human exploration of space, and _The Return_ is an enjoyable way to follow his thinking in the form of a reasonably dramatic, fun-to-read story. It's a quick read, it makes you think, and it has a happy ending. What more could you ask for? Robert Adler, author of _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_, and _Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome_.

Makes me wish this was reality and not fiction!

This story from Buzz Aldrin reads almost like an alternate US space history - one in which the government allowed private business to take up the space tourist business. What makes this story a little more poignant is that the space shuttle Columbia places a significant role in the story. The pace keeps the reader flipping from page to page, and the storyline makes you want to believe that this type of R & D is really happening in the private sector. My only gripe is that Aldrin could have been a little more creative in creating one of the main civilian characters instead of simply using a caricature of Michael Jordan.

Techno- Mystery from an Alternate History.

Although somewhat light in detail of characters and plot, "The Return" is a fine read of what the U.S. Space Program COULD be leading to. The ideas and dreams of one of America's Finest show, in a well thought out, suspenseful tale of International intrigue that leads from Low Earth Orbit through the morass of the Media and the National legal system, to the intricate spiderweb of Worldwide interagency espionage and skullduggery! An excellent means of entertaining oneself on a weekend away from it all, at home or on vacation, or sending self off to one's own Dreamland!

Starts terribly, but rapidly reaches orbit

The first chapter of this book is AWFUL: a press conference with a smug first-person narrator just cramming back story down our throats. But it really does pick up after that, although I wasn't the least sorry to see one insufferably perfect character die in chapter two. After that, though, it really does get moving nicely, and by the end you do share Aldrin's enthusiasm for getting us back into space. As I said, a slow start but ultimately a worthwhile book --- and perhaps the most beautiful book I've seen in a while, with a transluscent dustjacket overtop of a glossy hard cover.

THE RETURN returns to Aldrin's strong space suit

THE RETURN covers techno thriller territory familiar for readers of ENCOUNTER WITH TIBER. Many of the same elements are in both hard science-fiction novels: a family involved for generations in spaceflight, a divorced couple driven apart by the demands of aeronautics, a disaster aboard an American space shuttle, an emergency on an orbiting outpost, bad guy communists. Some ideas are identical: realistic rocketry, an evaluation and projection of the next decade of manned exploration, ShareSpace as a advocate for civilian space travel, the struggle for the soul of the space program. Some plot devices are new: a courtroom drama, an international nuclear incident, and covert operations. The result is something of a storytelling salad - a little of everything is thrown into the bowl, and it's all good for you. After a slow start, RETURN becomes a quick, exciting read, with technical details explained in simple terms and characters given human dimensions.But unlike TIBER, which literally spanned time and space in first person narratives, Return follows a more constrained literary approach. Only three narrators are used, childhood friends who have drifted apart and reunite as adults. As a result the overall scope of RETURN is less grand than TIBER, but certainly more readable. Aldrin is at his best with the details of the space exploration business, with the lift capabilities, PR coups, long hours, and exhilaration and exhaustion. Barnes does an outstanding job in taking Aldrin's space strategies and spinning them into the story, around the high cost of machines and the higher costs to men and women as marriages fail and friendships are sacrificed. The authors are unique in their qualifications to comment on the current state of the space program and to speculate with fictional events on what politics or profit-margins will be prophetic. There have been crises large and small to test the confidence and commitment to an American space program: the Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 "successful failure," the Challenger explosion, the troubles of the Hubble Space Telescope, the problematic space stations Skylab, Mir and ISS, the disappearance of Mars probes. These historical hardships lend credence to the reaction surrounding the untimely tragedy in chapter two of THE RETURN -- the death of basketball superstar MJ on orbit. Our protagonist, former astronaut Scott Blackstone and CEO of ShareSpace, is set up to take the blame. In short order, Scott is fired and sued by MJ's mother for $1 billion, while a nation grieves a slain celebrity and debates the risks of the conquest of space. The "Citizen Observer" program was to bring Americans from all walks of life along on selected shuttle missions, so that schoolteachers, shop mechanics and newscasters who dreamed of flying could go where senators, Saudi princes, and Scott Blackstone have been. There are those who do not want it to succeed for a variety of reasons: some sinister,