The seeds to all good literature lies in two words : what if ? Take an occurrence in human history and imagine an alternative outcome to it and voila ! you have material for a good book in your hands. These flights of fantasy are what makes alternative history books some of my favorite reads.

Here is an America where JFK survived the assassination attempt. Shattered and bound to his wheelchair, he urges the space program onward. A world where the Nixon administration did not drop the guillotine on the manned Mars program and finally in 1985, the USA lands a trio of people on Mars. I found this premise very very interesting and Baxter did deliver a colorful roller coaster ride in all of these 600 pages ! Much more than telling the story of three astronauts who go to Mars, the author here focuses on NASA. This then means the focus is on this technological organization and how it tides over many an obstacle in putting men on Mars. The human factor of this novel is quite unmissable and perhaps its biggest strength. With such a backdrop, it would have been easy for the author to slip into technical jargon and give the reader a long technical manual (read Tom Clancy !) and put his characters on the Mars. Baxter however goes the other way. He tells us of the men and women who build the launch vehicles. Those who obsessively pursue this one goal of pushing beyond the envelope of technology, the astronauts who lay down their lives for the bigger goals of technocracy and many more unnamed faces intricately linked with the organization called NASA.The novel spans the story of the first such manned space flight which lands on the red planet and how the mission comes to be. There is jargon yes but the author keeps this to understandable levels and the focus is mainly on people and circumstances. As befits a novel of such scope, the focus is not placed on a few individuals but more on an ensemble cast.

The brightest flash of brilliance in the book is in the character named Joseph Muldoon. He is the equivalent of Edwin Aldrin in real life and perhaps the most pivotal character who drives the story forward. I liked him precisely for his all-American nature and the way he bulldozes his way through all the garbage to get to what matters : completion of the mission. Through the span of this tale careers rise and fall, people come and go and politics keeps poking its fingers in places it has no reason to and all this makes the story a great deal interesting. There is also the story of the three-men crew : Stone, York and Gershon who finally make it to the moon. When I was reaching the end of the book it stuck me quite odd that way back in 1980's it would have been rather impossible for such a crew to break free of the barriers of orthodoxy and prejudice to fly out of Earth orbit. Wondering why ? Read on and find out for I ain't letting the cat out of its bag where its all cozy and comfy !

It took me a long time to finish this book. I couldn't find a logical reason for this as I moved at quite a stiff pace but still the book mocked me with its size of unread pages. The interest level for sci-fi in my reading list is also steadily climbing. Earlier I read up on Asimov and grumbled my way through Heinlein and applauded my way through Clarke but now this book makes me want to read more of sci-fi ! Recommended !