A billionaire father offers a tenbilliondollar prize to anyone who can land on Venus and retrieve the remains of his son, who died trying to land years earlier. Ben Bova picked his villains well for this fast-paced, popcorn-and-Milk- Duds matinee: Topping the playbill is our sister planet, Venus itself, which Bova matter-of-factly describes as "the most hellish place in the solar system." Sci-fi authors (Bova included) have all but colonized Mars by now, but few have boldly gone to the aluminum-melting, sulfuric-acid-soaked surface of the Morning Star. Venus proves a mighty, unthinking antagonist indeed--frustrating the efforts of sickly but likable rich kid Van Humphries to land there and recover the remains of his older brother Alex, who died two years earlier on another ill-fated mission. Van gets pushed back and forth between the book's two lesser villains--his mean old cuss of a father, Martin Humphries, who's posted the $10 billion Venus Prize to the first person to return Alex's body, and Lars Fuchs, a belligerent asteroid miner and Martin's arch-nemesis, who's also decided to make a go at the purse. Characterizations ride coach on this high-adventure flight, but remember that we're talking about Ben Bova here. It's hard to dispute the master's choices as you're following Van's well-researched, thrills-and-chills descent through Venus's pressure-cooker atmosphere. With solid science, a palatable environmental message (how could you resist commenting on greenhouse gases in a book like this?), and an inspiring character arc for unlikely hero Van, Venus delivers guilt-free, man-against-nature SF in a tight, page-turning package. --Paul Hughes When business tycoon Martin Humphries offers a fortune to the first person to travel to Venus to recover the remains of his son Alex, lost on the planet two years earlier, two men take him up on his offer. One is his frail second son Van; the other is his rival and greatest enemy. Bova's latest novel not only captures the alien and hostile Venusian atmosphere but also manages to tell a top-notch adventure story of broken dreams and lifelong hatreds that match the turbulence of Venus itself. The author's excellence at combining hard science with believable characters and an attention-grabbing plot makes him one of the genre's most accessible and entertaining storytellers. Recommended for sf collections. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. A leading light of hard sf and space advocacy turns his attention from Mars to Venus. Van Humphries is the sickly and despised second son of a billionaire whose elder and favorite son died in the first attempt to land a man on Venus. In competition with another expedition, undertaken by his late mother's first husband, he sets out to recover his brother's body. Bova's subordination of characterization to setting and hardware works well because it is subordinated to the depiction of a worthy antagonist--the terrifying environment of Venus' surface, where the atmospheric pressure is hundreds of pounds per square inch, temperatures are high enough to melt lead, visibility is nonexistent, the weather starts at vile and gets worse, and the air is, when not actively poisonous, still totally unbreathable. Altogether, the place is a fine setting for a man-versus-environment tale. Hard sf fans in general and Bova fans in particular will generate strong demand for his highly respectable new effort. Roland Green Guess where the action of editor/writer Bova's latest science fiction yarn (Return to Mars, 1999, etc.) takes place? Egotistical and brutal magnate Martin Humphries offers a prize of ten billion dollars to anyone who can reach the surface of Venus and recover the remains of his beloved son, Alex, who perished there two years ago during a voyage of exploration. Narrator Van, Martin's sickly, despised younger son, declares he'll make the attempt. Asteroid miner Lars Fuchs, Martin's hated and feared longtime antagonist, will also join the effort. With Martin pulling all the strings, Van is given little say in his expedition's makeup. Still, the party reaches Venus and descends into the thick, broiling atmosphereonly to discover microorganisms consuming the fabric of their ship! Fuchs, having also arrived on Venus in a vastly superior ship, attempts a rescue, but only Van and biologist Marguerite survive. Fuchs loathes Van, of course, and beats him up. But Van needs constant medicationhe saved none from the wreckor he'll die. Only Fuchs himself can provide a blood transfusion. Fuchs agrees, but then puts Van to work. The ship descends toward the hellish surface. Finally, after various adventures (mutiny, illness, murder, revenge), the seekers discover Alex's escape podonly for their ship to be threatened by weird, metal-eating life-forms. Exciting and vividly wrought, if somewhat predictable and improbable. The coming-of-age theme, though, should find its natural YA audience.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. Al