This book is both an Alternate History, and a science fiction story. the major point of departure from our home reality lies way back at the creation of the solar system – one of, if not the earliest point of departure I’ve ever seen! Rather than the fourth planet in our solar system being Mars, just outside that magic Goldilocks zone where life as we know it can survive relatively comfortably, we have Minerva , a few million kilometres, or so inside that zone so life of some form could come into existence. So throughout its existence, Humanity has been aware that there is at least one other world with life on it. The book doesn’t really go into this background and how it may have changed various aspects of society on Earth directly, though it doesn’t seem to have made it any more peaceful or wise. This reality’s equivalent of the Viking mission is where the book opens as a prequel event to the main story. Life was a given. Intelligent life was a surprise, but the creature that destroyed the probe almost as soon as it had deployed its cameras, was undeniably a tool user as it took an axe to the intruding machine, thereby destroying it…
The ensuing scramble to be first to Minerva to have boots on the ground of this bluey-green planet was intense. This is where we become aware of a second change from our timeline – the Soviet Union was still a going concern more than a decade after it had come crashing down in reality - there’s a brief mention of President Gorbachev suffering an aneurism with a character wondering whether it had been an entirely natural event. This basically means there’s still plenty of cold war paranoia and competition to infuse the story.
Both the American and Soviet missions consist of six people, the Americans made up of three couples and the Soviets five men and a single woman, presumably the best in their specialties (with at least one KGB agent just to spice up the mix).
I loved the minervans – the first thing that came to mind was the hydra (Cnidaria Hydrozoa) that can be found in some freshwater streams, though a lot larger! Minervans are hexagonally symmetrical with six legs, arms and eyes, basically making the concept of front and back pretty meaningless. They also have the ability to widen themselves, used as a sign of respect in this context and are able to change colour depending on mood, which is under their control to a degree. Minerva, and the Minervans are also very cold by Terran standards, with average temperatures in the Antarctic ranges and ice is a usable construction material most of the year. although the minervan characters end up coming across as being as warm hearted as the strangers appearing in their midst from the skies.
Most of the book deals with how the teams interact with the minervans they appear amongst – the American minervans are basically at a feudal level of society, whilst the Soviet minervans are proto capitalists, which allows Turtledove to have some fun as the soviets justify helping their minervans. The nixed sex American group are a shock in their own way to the minervans, for minervan mates don’t survive the birthing process (six budlings – one male and five mates). Each of the teams, and minervan groups, are separated by an even deeper version of Valles Marineris that’s regularly flooded out each ‘spring’.
The Americans, or their medic anyway, reckon that the mates can be saved from bleeding out after budding and they persuade their boss minervan to trial their procedure so they could try and save his favourite mate. The Soviets are in an even stickier position when they find their minervans are in the middle of setting up an invasion of the lands where the American minervans live. At first, they take the high road and just document the processes the minervans are undertaking but when the leader of the invasion force sees what an AK47 can do, he first off tries to buy it, then forces the Soviets to use it on their behalf. This forces the Americans to support their minervans. This causes ructions back on Earth, but, again, this is noted as an aside.
Turtledove manages to keep a light tone throughout most of the book, though this is more of a mocking tone when dealing with the Soviets, even though quite a lot of the events in the book are quite serious. Another thing that’s a pleasant change to some of his better-known story arcs is that the limited number of (Terran) characters means he has to stay focused on these people and keep most of the activity relatively localised. He’s also not afraid to give the minervans some of the best plotlines and allowing them to show that ‘primitive’ doesn’t mean ‘stupid’ ( )

This was a book that I read both because of its author and its premise. With dozens of alternate history novels, novellas, and short stories to his credit, Harry Turtledove is the acknowledged master of the genre, and I have enjoyed many of his works. The description of the story also had much to offer, moving away from the standard Civil War/World War II setting of far too many alternate histories to pose a much more refreshing one – what if the fourth planet from our sun was capable of sustaining life?

Much of what Turtledove does with this is imaginative. No longer the “red planet” we know, he bestows upon it a different name – “Minerva” rather than Mars. To make it habitable, then planet is larger, though its distance from the sun means that it is still a cold place. He also devises an ecology based around entirely different premises, imagining evolution producing radial rather than symmetrical species with their own cycles and habits. After this life is discovered by an American probe in 1976, the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union race to send manned missions to Minerva to explore it for themselves, with the story itself being a tale of the two missions’ simultaneous arrival on the planet.

Yet as I read this book, I was struck by how conventional it was. Once the premise is outlined, the plot quickly develops along the lines of the American-versus-Soviet space contests typical of many sci-fi novels produced during the Cold War. Propping up the story with an alternate-history setting allows Turtledove to get away with this, but it gives the entire book a prematurely dated feel. Moreover, too many of the characters are underdeveloped, sometimes leaving them indistinguishable from one another. The “Minervans” suffer from similar flaws, with only a few of them clearly defined in any way and none of them ever coming across as truly alien.

As a result, the book might disappoint readers familiar with Turtledove's later work. While not a bad novel, it lacks the distinctive characters and immersion into detailed alternate Earths that are hallmarks of many of the author's subsequent writings. Fans of Turtledove's other novels will find the absence of such elements leaving them wanting more, as it fails to provide what they have come to expect from this notable author. ( )

My reactions to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.

This is one of those alternate histories (like Harry Harrison’s Eden series) based on a variation of physical science. Here Mars (called Minerva here) is big enough to support an atmosphere and an intelligent race has evolved there. Human history has altered a little, particularly astronomy and mythology. About the most Turtledove gives us of altered human history is some mention of various near clashes of Soviet and American forces in Beirut and a shortened Gorbachev regime.

It’s this history of Soviet-American tension that forms the background of this story about a joint Soviet-American mission to Mars after the Minervans trash the Viking lander. A proxy war results as each side lands on different sides of the Jötun Canyon (the scenery of Minerva, particularly this huge canyon with its mighty seasonal floods, is one of the best parts of this book) and gets involved in a local war of expansion. The expansionist side is backed by the Soviets because Marx tells them this tribe, somewhat industrialized, is further along the path to revolution.

The Americans decide to help the other side and also solve a very old Minervan problem: while Minervan males are very long lived, Minervan females die in childbirth. An American doctor, through surgical techniques, solves the problem. The plotting is competent, the characterization is adequate and the story held my interest, but it was nothing special. Apart from their morphology and reproductive biology, the Minervans could have been humans, and I think the story could have been shorter. Perhaps the problem is that Turtledove’s forte is alternate history of the intensely sociological and historical kind. Merely altering the planet of Mars doesn’t give him much opportunity to use that talent. ( )

An interesting 'what if', in Turtledove's usual style, though there's no Civil War or WW2 connections. What if Mars had an atmosphere and strange alien life, and the Cold War had continued in the space race? Good characters and plot, though his aliens are a bit too human thinking. ( )

An engaging look at a parallel universe where the US and Soviets both land on Mars (called here Minerva) and make contact with factions of Martians, threatening to extend terrestrial Cold War into hot war on the red planet. However, both Earth sides ultimately step back from the final step of warring with each other, being instead caught up almost despite themselves by the pre-existing Minervan hostilities. The author is very good at establishing a convincing alien civilisation, with different assumptions from ours, and individual alien characters with whom the reader can sympathise. One wonders how future Earth-Minerva contacts would turn out in this universe. ( )