Chuck Svenson was a citizen of the Moon - and proud of it! To him, Earth, with its heavy atmosphere, even though it was the "mother" planet, was not the best place in the universe to live. As he rocketed back home from a blast off a point high in the Andes, he anxiously looked forward to the reception he'd receive at Moon City. For he was the only citizen from Earth's satellite to be selected by the United Nations' interplanetary commission as a crew member for the first ship to attempt a flight from Moon to Mars.
How Chuck learned that his orders had been changed, that he was to be replaced by an earthling, started a chain of dramatic and thrilling events that ended in the weird and torturous catacombs of Mars. For the spunky teen-ager would not be cheated of the universe's greatest adventure! When the Mars-bound ship rose on a pillar of flame above the desolate lunar landscape, it carried a stowaway in its hold. What Chuck's extra weight meant to the carefully figured fuel supply, the ship's crash landing on a "lifeless" planet, the disappearance of vitally needed tools from the vicinity of the stricken ship - fill these pages with suspense and mystery.
A story of bizarre adventure, MAROONED ON MARS is also the tense personal drama of a young man who shoulders the responsibility for stranding his shipmates. In a breath-taking climax, near the ruins of a long-lost civilization that suddenly comes alive with rodent-like Martians, Chuck proves the courage and bravery of one young "citizen of the Moon!"
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Nothing memorable. A YA novel where everything goes fine for the protagonists -to the point that even during some crisis, it's always dealt with nochalance, no real sense of danger, no true stakes.
Basically, there is no conflict, and it is comprehensible: Back in 1952, the future was a bright horizon filled with promises, science fiction an unchartered territory of wonders and you didn't want to impress young readers with dark or overdramatic stuff.
As a result, this novel is a constant telegraphing of the next solution in favor of our heroes, it doesn't even care to create a true sense of suspence, of scare, of tension in the group -for example, despite the fact that Chuck, protagonist and stoaway, has automatically reduced, with his presence, the survival means of the marooned crew...well, nothing comes out of it, nothing!
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