Tales of the Grand Tour

Ben Bova

The Grand Tour is a series of individual books that tie together about man's exploration of our solar system. Ben Bova has recurring characters throughout these novels, but for the most part they also stand alone.

Tales of the Grand Tour is a group of short stories and vignettes pulled from some of the Grand Tour novels. I haven't read all the Grand Tour novels, but this collection makes me want to return to them - with some reservation. I had been reading The Rock Rats and quit because I didn't like where the characters appeared to have been going. I was sorry to immediately see that my fears were realized when I read the first short story, "Sam and the Flying Dutchman". Now I'm over that and can probably return and finish The Rock Rats.

This is good, solid, space type science fiction. Bova wrote each of these novels and short stories based on the most current information of the time for these places. For example, "Red Sky at Morning" is an excerpt from Return to Mars . It not only projects the damages of what is known about the windstorms on Mars, but also on the Pathfinder and Sojourner exploration robots, the two that had been sent to Mars when Return to Mars was written.

If you haven't read any of the Grand Tour novels by Bova, this collection is a good introduction. If, like me, you've read some of them, you'll find yourself drawn back in. If you've read all the novels, enjoy the excerpts and the separate short stories you'll find here.

Empire Builders
Mars
Moonrise
Moon War
Return to Mars
The Precipice
Jupiter
The Rock Rats
Saturn
The Silent War
Venus
Tales of the Grand Tour