Can you name this book?

Spoke to my dad about it on saturday, He seems to think youve got 3 MOVIES stuck in your head and relating them to books. All 3 movies came out around the early 80's.

Rendezvous' with mars.

 Rocheworld (I think it may have been released under flight of the dragonfly)

And he couldnt name the 3rd. But was sure there was a 3rd.

Thats his opinion anyway, hes been a scifi junkie since he could read and hes just turned 61 this year.

    I don't remember much else about it.   Don't tear your hair out trying to think of it, gents.  It's no biggy.  Maybe it'll come to me some day.

      Thanks for the effort though-much appreciated!

     --Chris

dirkpitt77

    Sorry guys, none of the books mentioned so far fits the bill.  I know it's not Rama, as I just read that for the 1st time about a month ago.   The other book doesn't fit either, as the Dragonfly I remember was not a large ship, but a small airborne craft.

So what else can you remember: Early (first?) trip or was Mars terraformed? Mixed crew? How large? Try to describe the Dragonfly: Color? Capacity? Pressurized or did the pilot have wear their pressure-suit?

poop.

are you sure there are no other details you can remember?

    Sorry guys, none of the books mentioned so far fits the bill.  I know it's not Rama, as I just read that for the 1st time about a month ago.   The other book doesn't fit either, as the Dragonfly I remember was not a large ship, but a small airborne craft.

TomZ2

 

MrSquid2U:

 

"Rama" was a trilogy with a co-writer and the basic premise is that a HUGE "spacecraft" enters our Solar System, well, three of them, nearly identical,  over the course of the books. IIRC the very small, fragile one man aircraft, the DragonFly  took part in one of the later books. It flew a long distance within the spacecraft from one area to another over a "sea". I believe it did crumple up pretty well by the time things were done.The books dealt with the exploration and trying to determine the meaning behind these spacecraft.

 

 

Back to our experiment on the reliability of memory, the Dragonfly was introduced in Chapter 24 of Rendezvous with Rama (the primogenitor, not one of the later books).

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. — Mark Twain

MrSquid2U

"Rama" was a trilogy with a co-writer and the basic premise is that a HUGE "spacecraft" enters our Solar System, well, three of them, nearly identical,  over the course of the books. IIRC the very small, fragile one man aircraft, the DragonFly  took part in one of the later books. It flew a long distance within the spacecraft from one area to another over a "sea". I believe it did crumple up pretty well by the time things were done.The books dealt with the exploration and trying to determine the meaning behind these spacecraft.

Back to our experiment on the reliability of memory, the Dragonfly was introduced in Chapter 24 of Rendezvous with Rama (the primogenitor, not one of the later books).

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. — Mark Twain

Scorpiomikey

Rama, i think you may have hit the nail on the head, expedition that ends in disaster, one man flyer called a dragonfly which i remember crashing (not sure if im right, been a while) 

And so we conclude our experiment on the reliability of 30 year memory, but there's also this little identification issue:

dirkpitt77

   Back in the early '80's, when I was eight or ten, I read this sci-fi book regarding an expedition to Mars. […]

The thread was initiated by "dirkpitt77", remember. Chris, does this work or were you remembering a DIFFERENT book?

Starship Trooper---I know this even though I am not a big space groupie...

Scorpiomikey

 

TomZ2:

 

I read it in Analog. But there's a [dinkywongo]-load of SF where the author uses Dragonfly as the name of some vehicle, e.g., the one-man aircraft from Rendezvous with Rama.

 

 

Rama, i think you may have hit the nail on the head, expedition that ends in disaster, one man flyer called a dragonfly which i remember crashing (not sure if im right, been a while) 

"Rama" was a trilogy with a co-writer and the basic premise is that a HUGE "spacecraft" enters our Solar System, well, three of them, nearly identical,  over the course of the books. IIRC the very small, fragile one man aircraft, the DragonFly  took part in one of the later books. It flew a long distance within the spacecraft from one area to another over a "sea". I believe it did crumple up pretty well by the time things were done.The books dealt with the exploration and trying to determine the meaning behind these spacecraft.

TomZ2

I read it in Analog. But there's a [dinkywongo]-load of SF where the author uses Dragonfly as the name of some vehicle, e.g., the one-man aircraft from Rendezvous with Rama.

Rama, i think you may have hit the nail on the head, expedition that ends in disaster, one man flyer called a dragonfly which i remember crashing (not sure if im right, been a while) 

Alternate title: The Flight of the Dragonfly

I read it in Analog. But there's a [dinkywongo]-load of SF where the author uses Dragonfly as the name of some vehicle, e.g., the one-man aircraft from Rendezvous with Rama.

Is it possibly Rocheworld by Robert Forward?

Quote from the synopsis.

one group journeys via the space-plane Dragonfly to the other lobe, Eau (French for water), which is covered almost entirely by ocean. The crew are caught in a violent storm that causes their plane to experience a crash water-landing.

Maybe it wasnt mars. age 9 or 10 makes me think teen sci-fi. But the description almost makes it sound like possibly a horror book.

Thanks for correcting my spelling btw, i always screw names up.

Are there ANY other details you could pass on? 

Scorpiomikey

Its sounds like possibly Robert Heinlein. [corrected] ill do some research.

It's not Uncle Bob. (If it had been him, I'd have nailed it. No brag. I've collected all of the Great Man's SF and (three) non-fiction books. He's the only writer I deliberately collected in hardcover.)

What bothers me is the airborne vehicle, "the Dragonfly". I can't seem to place that name in a MARS novel.

Its sounds like possibly robert heinlen. (SP?) ill do some research.

Yeah, I don't even remember whether it was a hardcover or paperback.  This being a little country school library back in 1982, I'm inclined to think paperback.   

Dang, I got the movie question, but I have no idea about this one.

Also, I spent about 10 seconds trying to figure out where the post was that TomZ2 "quoted".  Then slapped myself in the head as I finally got the joke.

Quasimodo

Doesn’t ring a bell…

Any additional details? (For starters: Paperback? Hardbound? Magazine?)