BOOK REVIEW : Crazy Crew Leaves Even Crazier Earth for Trip to Outer Space : VOYAGE TO THE RED PLANET<i> by Terry Bisson</i> William Morrow $16.95, 224 pages

The time is the very near future, somewhere after the turn of this century. The United States has finally definitively overspent itself and had to sell off its entire military and space enterprises to various corporations: Chase, Gerber, Disney, Gillette, Kawasaki, Phillip Morris. Rocket ships and their seedy orbiting satellites have become the amusement diversions of the lower classes--the kind of thing you win trips on as second prize on game shows.

Only 618 people on Earth know that at just about the time the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. gave up any idea of a joint space flight to Mars, certain companies went ahead and built the huge ship anyway. This ship, the Mary Poppins, is cunningly hidden in the wide belt of radioactive waste that circles the Earth now, like one of Saturn’s rings.

Who on Earth, now that America is bankrupt and no one cares a rat’s whisker about space travel, has either the money or the moxie to mount a voyage to Mars? The author has the inevitable and perfect answer. Only an independent Hollywood producer, the kind with wacky courage and a desperately unsteady bank account--someone like the crazy entrepreneur who once gave us “The Incredible Melting Man.”

Markson, the independent producer, rounds up an unlikely but very likable crew. Working with “Pellucidar Pictures, a wholly owned subsidiary of Greyhound-Thermos,” he finds a 57-year-old ex-astronaut named Bass (alone and living in a trailer), and Bass’ ex-girlfriend, a 41-year-old Russian woman who trained as a youth in Houston, Natasha Kirov. Markson also rounds up Lou Glamour, a midget cinematographer who’s crazy in love with the properties of light, and Dr. S. C. Jeffries, a black doctor in Beverly Hills, who carries on a “hibernation” practice for stars who need to keep their looks and stay rested between pictures. Almost as an afterthought, Markson hires on two certified movie stars, Beverly Glenn and Gary Fonda-Fox IV.

I don’t know if--reading this far--you’d want to go on with this sweet book, but I sure did. In a rusty, secondhand rocket, Bass and Kirov leave behind the confines of dirty Earth. On a seeping, drafty orbital station, they encounter some bored tourists and their teen-age daughter, Greetings Brother Buffalo, named after her grandmother, one of the very last hippies. Wouldn’t you know it? Greetings stows away, as the “Mary Poppins” makes the 18-month trip to Mars, while down on Earth, Markson has his own problems, getting fired from Pellucidar, putting in collect calls to the rocket ship, faxing up materials that get lost or stuck in space, organizing press conferences where only four or five members of the media show up. Markson has a constant flow of news for his crew members, but the news is always pretty bad.

And what of all the massive, NASA space backup we’ve grown to know and expect? Gone, all gone, reduced to one lovable nerd who sends up his calculations from pay phones, and paints motel rooms for a living.

So . . . Why is anybody involved in this crack-brained venture? Bass and Kirov are in love with space--and a little bit with each other. The cinematographer sees Mars as better than an acid trip, and twice as spectacular. The inbred movie stars will go anywhere to act--a gig is just a gig to them.

And, the initials of S. C. Jeffries, that cynical black hibernation doctor, stand for Sundiata Cinque. Jeffries’ dad was arrested back in the African Brotherhood Uprising of 1995, and Jeffries’ mission to Mars holds a special significance.

It’s the mark of a true artist to cut from dreary “real” life to the novel that will come from the dreary experience, or in this case, the blockbuster movie. In America, the military is vanquished, at least temporarily; Hollywood rules. Terry Bisson has anticipated this happy if somewhat dull reality, and made it into a wonderful story.

Next: Robert H. Kupperman reviews “The Fall of PA 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons).