The Mars Mystery
Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval & John Grigsby
Michael Joseph hbk, 384 pgs, £16.99
Review by Dave Clark (1998)
Disappointing. Subtitled ‘A Tale of the End of Two Worlds’, this is an example of things being taken too far. Partly it’s about the possibilities of asteroids, comets and the like coming close to or colliding with the Earth, also taking in the theory that this happened to Mars. It’s now accepted as scientists now accept as bleeding obvious that there are lots of big flying objects out there, and that one might hit the Earth one day. In fact, taken over a long enough time period, it’s inevitable, and we could be about due. And? This book presents a survey of facts and theories and gets excited and alarmed. It also catalogues the alleged artificial objects on Mars (you remember, that face thing from The X-Files, dubious pyramids and so on) and draws parallels with ancient Egypt, incorporating a range of theories including plenty of conspiracy stuff about NASA and so on.
It’s not that I’m sceptical (about asteroids, comets and meteors at least), it’s that the book doesn’t do much. Basically, then, it draws heavily on Immanuel Velikovsky (try Worlds in Collision, The Peoples of the Sea, Ages of Chaos or Earth in Upheaval for early exploration of all of the above ideas) as these books often do. In this case there isn’t much of an update. After Hancock and Bauval’s previous and impressive work covering the astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians I was hoping for much more; there isn’t much that’s new or even very detailed here. It seems they’ve either contracted millennium fever or produced a quickly written cash-in book. The kindest things we might say are that it might fund further research and later, more serious books, or serve as an introduction to their work.