Chris Gerrib’s New Novel Gets Rave Review

Chris Gerrib’s new novel The Mars Run received a rave review from Ron Miller, a Hugo-nominated artist and writer.

Villa Park, Il (PRWEB) June 25, 2006 -- Chris Gerrib’s new novel The Mars Run received a rave review from Ron Miller, a Hugo-nominated artist and writer.

Ron’s review:
Every once in a while...well, once in a blue moon, to be exact...I'm sent a self-published novel that makes me wonder, "Why in the world is this book self-published"? There is nothing that I can see about Chris Gerrib's "Mars Run" that is of less quality than the best hard science fiction being published today...and in fact it is better than most. It reads very much like a three-way cross between early Heinlein, Joe Haldeman and Allen Steele. Set in the immediate future it deals in an era of space exploration that one rarely finds in recent science fiction. (The science is also very good, another rare thing to find in much current science fiction---and a quality vanishingly rare in self-published SF.) Although one reviewer has described the book as "space opera"---no doubt because it introduces space pirates in its plot---this is very misleading, since there is little to compare between "Mars Run" and what is generally thought of as space opera---the works of E.E. "Doc" Smith, for instance. What the book really is represents the very best of what science fiction is really all about: human beings. And that's where its great strength lay: in the vivid, realisitic depiction of its characters, in particular Gerrib's heroine, Janet Pilgrim. She would be one of the best-realized heroines of SF in any event, but this is made even more remarkable by the fact that she tells her story in the first person...a feat few male writers have succeeded in pulling off. She is tough, resourceful, likeable and altogether realistic and who she is and what she becomes is really what the book is all about. Three thumbs up for what I fully expect to see become a major new voice in contemporary SF.

The Mars Run opens in 2071, when Janet Pilgrim’s family goes bankrupt, ruining her plans to go to college. Too embarrassed to go to a community college, Janet investigates her options. Faced with a choice of joining the Army or signing up as a crewmember on a freighter bound to Mars, she chooses the later. She may not survive long enough to regret that decision.

Link to Publication and review: http://www.lulu.com/content/256132
Author’s personal website: www.privatemarsrocket.net

About the Author
Chris Gerrib is a resident of Villa Park, IL and Director of Technology for a Chicago-area bank. He holds degrees from the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University.

About Ron Miller
Ron Miller is an internationally known illustrator/author whose more than forty books include the Hugo Award-winning The Art of Chesley Bonestell, The Grand Tour, which has been deemed a "modern classic" (with nearly a quarter million copies in print), and an eleven-volume series for young adults--Worlds Beyond--which received the prestigious Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Physics. Many of these books have gone through multiple printings, foreign translations and have been Book-of-the-Month selections.

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