The Forge of Mars

Tau Wolfsinger is a brilliant NASA technician struggling to get his ideas taken seriously in the halls of bureaucracy. A man of Navajo descent, he has a way of looking at science and the world that does not fit the corporate mold of over-specialization, and like many an eccentric genius he does not have any desire to play the game that leads to rapid promotion within an organization. Wolfsinger's interest is in artificial intelligence. His pet proposal would have him designing an artificial intelligence capable of procreating itself, learning and advancing on its own through a form of coevolution as weak links in the nanotechnology development are weeded out, and eventually (albeit quickly) out-performing and out-analyzing human beings. Grant my proposal, he says, and I will create an AI that will begin with nanotechnology and build an entire human colony all by itself. No one at NASA wants to go along with his "dangerous" ideas, though.

Enter the Davros Group and secret discoveries on Mars. The remains of an alien civilization have been discovered, among which is a portal that the Russian scientists in control of the base have been unable to figure out. Through a somewhat clumsy set of circumstances, Wolfsinger is suddenly given the money to pursue his dream but is coerced into doing his work on Mars. Here both he and his girlfriend become pawns of powerful factions who are never really fleshed out sufficiently for my liking. The work on the alien Martial portal is being conducted (and kept secret) by the Russian military, but alien intelligences on Mars contend with the Russians over control of Wolfsinger's contributions to pivotal events bearing possibly significant repercussions back on Earth.

The science of this novel is detailed and impressive, as Balfour delights in theorizing on the practical uses of nanotechnology in the future. The weak link in the story, though, involves the political shenanigans working behind the scenes. The mysterious Davros Group is barely explained at all, making its cooperation with a Russian military officer hoping to restore Russia as a superpower seems rather tenuous. Even the actions of Wolfsinger's girlfriend oftentimes made little sense to me, although Wolfsinger himself is an impressively well-developed character. I was also a little surprised to learn that the alien artifact discovered at the very beginning is basically ignored throughout the first half of the novel. The Forge of Mars is a well-written science fiction novel, but it seems to pose a number of provocative questions that it fails to follow up on outside the main focus of the plot, and that fact served to limit the extent of my personal involvement with the story as a whole.