conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Rainbow Mars about Svetz, Earth, Mars with the genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: According to the author, time travel is logically impossible--sheer fantasy. So when time-agent Svetz heads back from polluted future Earth in search of extinct animals, he tends to sideslip into fantastic, fictional worlds. In short stories collected in <a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345334183/${0}">The Flight of the Horse</a> (1973), his quests for a horse, a Gila monster, and a whale unearthed a unicorn, a dragon, and Moby-Dick. Less comic but equally daft, Rainbow Mars combines both space and time travel to explore Mars in the deep past, before it was a dead world. Naturally it's populated by a menagerie of warring fictional Martians from <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Burroughs%2c%20Edgar%2c%20Rice/${0}">Edgar Rice Burroughs</a> (multi-armed sword-wielders), <a href="/exec/obidos/author=Wells%2c%20H.G./${0}">H.G. Wells</a> (tentacles and heat rays), and less familiar authors. Svetz and companions are soon in big trouble. Complications include a gigantic alien tree extending into Mars's orbit--an organic version of the space elevator in Arthur C. Clarke's <a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345347943/${0}">The Fountains of Paradise</a>. One of these useful "beanstalks" on Earth seems a highly desirable facility, but there are hidden drawbacks, and most of the multiplying timelines lead to disaster. This is fun for experienced SF readers who can follow the in-jokes and the switchback ride through tangled alternative histories. The earlier, even funnier Svetz stories are included as a bonus. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk