SF Novel poll: Playoffs week 1

[Ocicat]

Alright, we have our 16 candidates, now it's time to match them off one by one and find the favorite SF Novel of the collected Escape Artist community!  And to start off, we have a Mars vs. Mars showdown!  Both from the classic age of SF - one novel (well, series of collected shorts) about colonizing mars, and of course the native Martians encountered there.  The other about a human boy raised on Mars by Martians coming to Earth. 

Mars was a classic setting for SF stories - not only was it close by, but seemed to have signs of habitation... all those well organized seeming canals that must be full of water.  Not quite what the current rovers are sending back pictures of, though the reality is still pretty fascinating, despite seeming to lack the four armed green giants of Barsoom, or the tripod tanks of War of the Worlds.  Of the final sixteen books, these two and War of the Worlds deal with Mars, though all in very, very different ways.

[Sandikal]

I loathed "Stranger in a Strange Land" when I read it in the Eighties.  One of my GoodReads groups had it as a book of the month selection in 2008, so I read it again.  I still loathed it, but I understood why. 

I don't remember much about "The Martian Chronicles".  I read it as a teen back in the Seventies.  What I do remember is that I devoured ever Ray Bradbury work I could get my hands on and I loved them all.

[Bdoomed]

I haven't read either of these

[Poppydragon]

I adored Stranger in a Strange Land from the first time I read it and it is one of those that re-read every year or so. As for The Martian Chronicals...I never really got Bradbury no matter how many times I tried

[stePH]

I never really warmed to Bradbury, though I don't actively dislike him.  And I love Heinlein in spite of his faults.  No contest here for me.

And yes, I've read both of these books, though many years ago (Chronicles only once).