Venus by Ben Bova

c Waterloo Public Library 2008

Venus (2000) by Ben Bova is the story of a very rich man and his two sons: unfortunately, Alex, the older son and his father's favorite, died several years earlier when his mission to Venus ended with tragedy. Van is the younger son, and has health problems; his mother died during his birth, and Van believes that this is why his father has always treated him so harshly. As the story opens, Martin Humphries is celebrating his 100th birthday on the moon with a lavish party: Van attends reluctantly and finds out that his father is going to disown him in a few months, on Van's next birthday, and that his father has offered a $10 billion award to anyone who goes to Venus to retrieve the body of Alex.

Although Van is physically limited--he has to take several enzyme injections daily--he decides that he will take up the challenge, and much of the early parts of the book detail his efforts to build a ship and acquire a crew. In the meantime, a man who is one of his father's greatest rivals also takes up the challenge: Lars Fuchs made a fortune out in the asteroid belt. Van discovers later that Lars is also the first husband of his mother.

As the mission gets organized, Van's choice of captain gets overturned by his father: Desiree Duchamp shows up and assumes command, bringing her daughter with her, Marguerite, a biological scientist. Van recognizes that there is a rather startling resemblence between the two women, and then finds out that Marguerite is a clone of her mother. Van gets Tomas Rodriguez, an experienced astronaut who had gone to Mars several times, to agree to stay on as the number two person, and they finish work on the ship and fill out the rest of the crew and take off on their mission.

I was fascinated by the characters, description, and storyline of this book; I haven't read anything by Bova before, but knew that he was a prolific and popular Sci Fi writer. Now I know why. Van's story is one of transformation and triumph: the rigors of the mission force him to focus not on his fears and physical limitations, but to take risks and fulfill his promise to find and retrieve his big brother. Along the way he discovers the real reason for his father's bias towards him, and learns to trust his own instincts.

This was a great read, and I plan to check out some of the other titles in the WPL catalog (including Mars, Mercury, Saturn). Ben Bova has a great website, by the way; you might enjoy checking it out for yourself.