Despite author Eric Idle’s Monty Python pedigree, there aren’t many big laughs along The Road to Mars (subtitled "A Post-Modem Novel"). Readers expecting the comedy to strike like a cream pie thrown by the hand of Zeus may be disappointed. On the other hand, those in the mood for a well-crafted, slyly subversive book should be pleasantly surprised.
The comedy team of Alex Muscroft and Lewis Ashby, accompanied by their android servant Carlton, ply their trade along "the road to Mars," the vaudeville circuit of the 22nd Century.
After barely escaping a disastrous New Year’s Eve performance on Saturn, Muscroft and Ashby set out in search of greener showbiz pastures, getting a booking on the luxury space cruise ship Princess Diana. They secure a spot on the bill, but are fired after their first performance. To make matters worse, they find that the rest of their bookings have been canceled as well, seemingly in retribution for this insult.
Even after the hapless trio gets back on the road to Mars, they continue to stumble into one disaster after another, becoming, through no fault of their own, involved in murder, terrorism, and intrigue, encountering cops and thugs, love interests and children.
Framing all this frenetic action is the personal odyssey of Professor Bill Reynolds, the lone human disciple of Carlton’s theories about comedy. Even though robots are unable to understand irony or innuendo, Reynolds has become obsessed with bringing the robotic valet’s theories to the masses.
What does it all mean?
Like the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby films the title evokes, The Road to Mars is more about the journey than the destination. Indeed, at no point in the story do any of the principal characters set foot on Mars.
This is a natural outgrowth of the classic screwball comedy, the rules of which this book follows -- so far as it plays by any rules at all. By relying on implausible coincidences and outrageous circumstances, screwball comedies juggle characters and situations, keeping all the absurd elements in the air from colliding until the big finish.
Idle comments on this process by dropping clues to the reader about what’s really going on, resulting in a climax that can be read either as the end of a straightforward comic romp -- believable within the context of the form -- or as a sly criticism of how we expect comedies to evolve. As a result, the book succeeds by achieving both absurdity and a wry level of self-awareness (and self-parody) at the same time.
However, screwball comedies -- like just about anything else -- work better when the audience has a stake in the characters, and this, sadly, comes across as the book's chief failing. Few would argue that the situations Idle lays out aren't humorous, but while the characters are interesting, they are unable to handle the demands the story places on them.
Luckily, the novel does have a real star in the form of Carlton the robot, whose own comic epiphany is the turning point. While the theme of a non-human attempting to understand the distinctly human notion of comedy is a science fiction standard, it has rarely been handled so well.
Of course, it helps that Eric Idle has comedy credentials dwarfing those of most SF writers. After decades in the business, Idle understands humor inside out and backwards, and The Road to Mars benefits from this understanding. Whatever sins he commits with his characters, his writing on comedy is unimpeachable.
Moreover, while Idle clearly knows comedy, he doesn’t simply trade on his reputation, although he does drop the occasional Python tagline (and transvestite scene) into the narrative as a gift to the faithful. For truly obsessed fans, there is even a biographical aside concerning the Secret Comedy Origin of Eric Idle.
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