How can you possibly compare this novel to an airhead such as Britney Spears? Personally, I liked the book a lot.

RE: “Much of the information Dula relates from the first person perspective allocated to her by Haldeman are mundane, yet ultimately the sort of details that people will be fascinated with when emigration to space and other planets starts to become a reality.”

After all, it IS a HARD science fiction book. And those “mundane details” are fascinating to some people today.

RE: ““An angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad — and a message for the newly arrived inhabitants of Mars: We were here first.””

Oh, c’mon – that’s right off the jacket blurb.

RE: “Remember Heinlein‘s Stranger from a Strange Land?”

It’s Stranger IN a Strange Land.

After reading your review, I had to check to see what website I was on. It reads, at least to me, like a supercilious screed by some oh so “literary” type who’s dripping with disdain toward the entire science fiction genre.