Red Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Paper Book, 1993

Description

Chronicles the colonization of Mars in the year 2026. For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny. John Boone, Maya Toitovna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers an opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life, and death. The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planet's surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces, for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed. Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity,… (more)

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

New York : Bantam Books, 1993.

User reviews

LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
I have to admit I couldn't follow the science here to any great degree, but that really didn't deter me from what I consider one of the best sci-fi novels I've read in a while.

Red Mars is the first of three books dealing with the colonization of Mars. Starting in the year 2026, the story deals
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with the first 100 men and women selected to go to Mars -- scientists and others known collectively as "the first hundred. " Not all of them see eye to eye on how things should go on the planet -- Some envision it completely terraformed, some see it as an opportunity to launch a new and perfect society, completely Martian, without depending on life being molded in Earth format -- a vision of a new totally Martian existence. To be really honest, I thought the political wranglings to be the best part of the book -- especially warnings about the future of society as big business tries to takes control of everything. Sound familiar? Considering it was written 15 years ago, I'd say he's not too far off the mark.

While not really going into plot here (trust me -- plot synopses are everywhere), let me say that I'd recommend this book to those who enjoy hard science fiction. If you're looking for little green men or other types of monsters, you won't find it here. I would guess that a lot of people will find it too long, so if you want something quick & easy requiring very little thought, you're not going to like this one either. If you're a reader who likes to pause and think, then you'll find a multitude of things to ponder between the covers.

I plan to go on and finish the trilogy, so that should be a recommendation within itself. Be sure you have lots of time before embarking on this book. You'll need it.
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LibraryThing member storyjunkie
I very much appreciated the complexity of this narrative. It is neither a simple quest plot (though colonization of Mars could easily fall into that), nor the more subtle character study of the human species in extremes. Robinson instead treats them all; through seven POV characters, and decades,
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Robinson puts a mirror to human endeavor, avarice, ingenuity, and endurance, all while introducing the reader to a stark landscape, such as we will never see in our lifetimes (given current NASA projects).

My only complaints are with the constant feeling of false starts (which I must admit, may be more my genre expectations that a weakness in the text), and the not-actually-subverted treatment of Asian and Arabic characters as alien, or inscrutable.The focus on Americans and Russians of both genders, and word-choice in other-wise neutral passages makes the assumed audience very noticeable, and the passages concerning Muslims and the Middle East unfortunately date the text, not just that it was published before there was an agreed-upon spelling for "Muslim" in mainstream English, but also their assumed bargaining position in the more political portions of the story.

For fifteen years old though, it's not holding up badly at all.
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LibraryThing member stretch
I hate to use a word that seems like a cliché these days, but Red Mars is an epic story.

The ideas in Red Mars are big, really big. Should Mars be terraformed so that it be more habitable? Should we leave it alone and frozen in time to be studied? Should the politicians on Earth be the ones to
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govern and rule settlements on another planet? If given a blank slate what would a new society loo like? What factors would shape it? How will people deal with an influx of new people, new cultures, and new ideas? Robinson tackles these issues by telling the colonization of Mars through several viewpoints from characters that run the full spectrum of ideas and motivations that shine a new and different perspective on the events that are shaping their world; their new Martian society. The personal struggles and political turmoil that comes with building a new world can be a little overly dramatic at times and bog the reader down. In the end though I'm glad that the characters don't take a secondary role and are in fact the main forces shaping Mars for what it will become. Without the diversity of characters and viewpoints this would have been just another fantastical sci-fi romp on another planet. Thankfully it is so much more than that.

The real meat of this book, however, are the descriptions of the alien landscape and science behind making Mars a place for human habitation. The descriptions will make you believe that you are seeing the sun setting on the polar dunes and looking down from the rim of Olympus Mons on the planet far below. You can practically hear it when a huge aquifer bursts and floods Valles Marineris with a roiling sea of ice and steaming water. It truly is a magnificent world that Robinson was able to build from the ground up. The technical details of their colonization and terraforming efforts are well thought-out. Full of the small details of geology, physics, genetic engineering, mechanical engineering, ecology, robotics, and spaceflight exhibit the research and our level of knowledge of Mars at the time the book was originally published (1993) that Robinson managed to include not as after thought, but as the main course. The detail wasn't confined to the sciences of terraforming. Robinson isn't afraid to explore the softer sciences of psychology of isolation, the economics of martian derived mining, and the politics of multinational corporations. What was really impressive to me was that Robinson managed to do all this without every talking down to the reader. I appreciate it when an author allows the reader to think with them and not force feed the reader into a particular scenario the author has predetermined is the right course.

Red Mars isn’t a perfect book, but there is so much in it that is great, it is certainly worth reading.
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LibraryThing member jvalka
The scope of this book is just staggering. There is a lot of hard science here, but the characters are also well drawn, distinct personalities; I love the blinking, owlish Sax, and also Hiroko, a Japanese Mars goddess. There is also a lot of sex here, and the resulting sexual politics between the
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first 100 scientists both en route and after they touch down. Tensions on Earth escalate dramatically with the invention of an anti-aging therapy, as the planet is already dangerously overcrowded at 10 billion. A revolution breaks out on Mars, and the space elevator is destroyed. This book feels very plausible, like future history. My admiration for the author's skill here is immense. One of my favorites.
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LibraryThing member TadAD
This book has the feel of something that would win the Nebula Award. Robinson takes up the initial colonization of Mars and gives you the whole thing: the physical hardships the original settlers face; the tensions of a hundred Type A personalities in close quarters; the intrigues of those who want
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to exploit Mars versus those who want to avoid the mistakes made on our home planet; love stories and love triangles; a whole lot of science, including a lot of areology (not geology).

It's a massive effort and sometimes it flows along effortlessly and sometimes it requires you to dig in your heels and stick with it as he catalogs the entire landscape of the planet (usually by describing what one of the settlers sees through the windshield of a transport as they go from Point A to far distant Point B…which they do a lot). Some have found this aspect a bit daunting but I have a reasonable tolerance for it and actually enjoyed coming to know Mars in such detail.

I liked this story. I can't say it's the best Nebula winner to come down the pike, but I definitely liked it enough that I'm ready to take up Green Mars and, if nothing unexpected occurs, Blue Mars thereafter.

My main complaint is that—in my opinion—the central personal conflict that we encounter at the beginning of the book and the actions that get taken as a result, never really get justified by the remainder of the story. Avoiding spoilers, let me just say that Frank's actions don't ring true for me and that failure is exemplary of a general lack of depth to the motivations of characters. In a nutshell, while Mars the planet is present in IMAX, the characters amble along in early cinematic color.

It's a good book and, as I said before, I'm not surprised it picked up the Nebula…particularly against the Kress or Wolfe books it faced in competition.
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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
"... Even without an imagination you can see what kind of power we have. Maybe that's why things are getting so strange these days, everyone talking about ownership or sovereignty, fighting, making claims. People squabbling like those old gods on Olympus, because nowadays we're just as powerful as
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they were."

"Or more," Nadia said. (323)

Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is now twenty years old, but it still provides a compelling story about 21st-century colonization of Mars. The hefty book describes the lives and work of the "first hundred" in the initial settlement expedition, who subsequently become something of a free-floating elite within colonial Martian society, as well as the inception of the project to terraform Mars. It is very "hard" science fiction, with lots of "areological" (i.e. the Martian equivalent of geological) detail, and a good deal of political and philosophical reflection.

The novel also includes a lot of literary allusion, not only of the predictable Martian sort (to Bogdanov, Burroughs, Bradbury, etc.), but conspicuously to The Lord of the Rings and to the stories of Phillip K. Dick (on whom Robinson wrote a dissertation). The "hardness" of the story can make a reader overlook its intense metatextuality. In fact, I was about 80% of the way through my read of the book before I realized -- long after the telling quote reproduced above -- that the key members of the first hundred who serve as the book's protagonists correlate very closely to ancient Egyptian gods. Once discovered, I find the relationship so vivid that I'm surprised to see no discussion of it in a quick search of the 'net. For the details of this correlation:

The opening novella "The Festival" is nothing other than the murder of Osiris (John Boone) by Set (Frank Chalmers). Next we are supplied in "The Voyage Out" with their backstory conflict involving a contest for the affections of Nephthys (Maya Toitovna). Over the course of the whole book, we are introduced to Isis (Hiroko Ai) as the priestess of the gods who invents the areoaphany, and the mother by magical means with Boone/Osiris of young Horus (Kasei). She is assisted by Anubis (the stowaway "Coyote").

Ra is, I think, Arkady Bogdanov, with Nadia Chernyshevski as Bast/Sekhmet. (Her triggering the destruction of Phobos realizes the legend about Sekhmet/Hathor as the vengeful agent of Ra.) In more tentative correlations, I read Sax Russell as Ptah, Ann Clayborne as Maat, Vlad Taneev as Thoth, and Michel Duval as Besz.


In more recent science fiction, the blindingly bright future of information processing seems to have eclipsed many of the still-valid technological concerns that are foregrounded in Red Mars. So it was very refreshing to read such an "old fashioned" story written with such care for them. The "first hundred" characters, despite their sometimes superhuman intensity, are all believably flawed. Robinson makes it possible for the reader to care about even the worst of them. (Except for Phyllis Boyle. I did not like her a bit!)

Red Mars is the first volume of a tightly-composed trilogy. Popular opinion seems to consistently rate it as the best of the three, but that does not deter me from reading further, because it is very good. I suspect that the larger work suffers from the syndrome that afflicted the Matrix movies. The brilliance of the initial installment stands out in contrast to prior work in the larger genre, while the sequels -- no worse, and in some respects better -- fail to provide the same sense of astonishment, since they are conserving and continuing the story developed in the first.
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LibraryThing member conformer
When you conspire to undertake the narrative of the colonization of an entire planet from beginning to end, the prospects and the results can either be mind-breakingly brilliant or stupefyingly dull. A writer of impressive talent and reach, Robinson somehow manages to pull off both with the first
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part of his ambitious Mars trilogy. Some of the best bits involve philosophical debates about what it is to be a human on Mars, deep and dark discourses on the exploitation of human and natural resources, and the shattering consequences of irreconcilable differences between two worlds. The more tiresome moments come in the form of Martian geology lectures, structural engineering porn, and a seemingly endless series of boring road trips across the red wastelands. At least it has a decent payoff at the end.
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LibraryThing member Shack70
I just finished reading Red Mars and was so disappointed. This book had so much potential going into it, but in short the characters suck. The main characters in Red Mars are all part of the first 100 people to colonize Mars. You don't get to meet all 100 of them (thank god), but out of the ones
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you do meet there is not one of them that is likeable. This lack of any characters to get attached to or even like a little makes reading Red Mars a painful experience. There are some good ideas about Mars, the technology to live there, and ways to terraform it all presented from characters that are just not enjoyable.
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LibraryThing member Cecrow
Tasking himself with a novel about the colonization and initial terraforming of the red planet, the author clearly acquired a truckload of knowledge about how this work might unfold. There's plenty of science to be had which I'm incapable of evaluating, but it seems adequate in 2016 for a novel
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that was published in 1993 and taking place in 2026. I don't expect developments would move as quickly or smoothly as this novel's pacing requires them to, but otherwise it satisfied my inexpert credibility. To that extent, it met expectations.

Where it surprised me was that it goes well beyond just being about applied science in the earliest days of the colony. The initial hundred settlers we get to know a sampling of are soon lost among the thousands who arrive to populate fast-expanding settlements, and the story expands to address psychology, economics, religion, multiculturalism, politics, the media, law and order - every aspect of human society is attended while exploring how events might unfold. There's also no shying away from the ramifications. Every hurdle becomes an ongoing complication in the plot rather than being magically resolved off-stage, which can be refreshing and taxing at the same time. Conveying the wonders of Mars is secondary to describing technology and how it is applied, and then also to the turmoil of a rapidly growing Martian society. The story runs hot and cold, fast and slow, with parts that fly past and more technical parts that slowed me right down. It felt like a bit of work to get through it, so avoid this if you're looking for light and breezy. A far cry from fantasy SF like Dune, this is an excellent capture of how things might really play out. It feels like a true glimpse into a possible future beyond what I'll live to see, unless someone comes up with that age-prolonging drug in time.
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LibraryThing member jprutter
I can't do it. I can not get into this story. It is supposed to be a classic, but I have been trying to read it for months and it just drags on not catching my interest.
LibraryThing member SiSarah
I'm very rarely disappointed by science fiction books about Mars -- there's just something compelling about the red planet -- and this one was certainly no exception. I flew through my first reading and am looking forward to a second read-through, to see how my views and opinions have changed as
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I've learned more about the characters and seen how things progressed.

This story of the first hundred colonists on Mars accomplishes a very difficult task: Not only are there seven or eight main characters, but it swaps viewpoints between them, allowing you to see what Frank, Nadia, Maya and Michel think of John before you see John's own viewpoint, for example. I think the characterization is one of the best strengths of this book, how you see how characters are, at the core, consistent, but the different interpretations and different aspects of them you see in the eyes of these others. Each has their own story, encapsulated in the greater story of the colonization of Mars.

Because of the disparate viewpoints and stories, the main narrative thread of the book can flag periodically. As one other reviewer mentions, at times it seems like all the characters do is drive or fly around Mars. But I was still definitely engrossed by the book, compelled to keep turning pages to find out more about the characters and how their lives and viewpoints intertwined.

Fortunately, while the characters are spending their time driving and flying around Mars, the descriptions are vivid and rich, allowing the reader to easily imagine the colors of a Martian sunrise, the dark swirl of a global dust storm, the cracking ice floes choked with rusty dust and fines. Honestly, in my opinion, the book is worth the read just for the imagery alone.

As is customary with books about Mars or colonizing a new planet, there is definitely a social and political aspect to the book, enjoyable and thought-provoking, but, in my opinion, secondary to the characterization and rich description.

Now I really want to go to Mars. How about it, folks? Can we start working on that one?
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LibraryThing member Lexicographer
It's been almost 15 years since I read Larry Niven's "Ringworld," but for some reason I kept thinking of it as I read "Red Mars." Maybe it's the construction element, or maybe it's just that I don't usually read genuinely hard SF, but I found myself remembering that book from my reading past.
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That's not to say that _Red Mars_ isn't original. _Red Mars_ is what SF can do best: it illuminates the here-and-now by creating what-ifs about the future. Robinson has created fascinating characters who operate in a world where today's flaws have become entrenched, and he shows how this is a dangerous situation. His exploration of the ethics and dilemmas of Mars exploration (and, ultimately, settlement) is thought-provoking, with no expense to the sheer pleasure of reading the book.

And one more observation: I found myself deeply interested in the structure of the book. This was a book that I wanted to pull apart to see why and how it was put together the way it was. Robinson opens each section with a kind of prelude, and each section focuses on a different character. This construction worked, and it found it as interesting, in its own way, as the way a space elevator just might be able to build itself.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
Kim Stanley Robinson is not an easy author to read or to love. Some of his novels can be counted among my favorites (The Years of Rice and Salt), and others (The Gold Coast, Forty Signs of Rain) I simply hated — or couldn’t even get through to the end (Fifty Degrees Below). Even the books I
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loved required a lot from me: they are thick, dense and epic, layered with so much hard science and social science that they can sometimes read like textbooks rather than novels. But with Robinson’s best books, the effort is worth it. Red Mars is a good example.

Robinson’s epic about the colonization of Mars (the first book in a trilogy on the subject) covers a lot of ground. Sure, it tackles the myriad technical problems involved in colonizing such a hostile planet, including how to build a space elevator for easier transport of settlers and exploitation of Mars’s resources. But from there, Robinson takes on even more weighty themes: the clash between those coming to Mars to try to create an entirely new way of life and those back on Earth who want to retain control; cultural conflicts among the various ethnic and religious groups spreading out to Mars; the discovery of an innovative medical procedure that greatly extends the human lifespan and the implications for an over-populated Earth; all climaxing in a planetary revolution propelled by all of these issues.

This is a ponderous book with a lot of big ideas. It may be a bit overlong — sometimes it seems as if all the characters do is drive around by themselves for great distances over the barren Martian landscape — but those sections may be excused by the action of the rest of the novel. Robinson actually helps us believe that living on Mars is something we can achieve, while showing us that these advances will probably only exacerbate our very human problems.
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LibraryThing member breic
The best Robinson I've read. But I would have preferred much more engineering and problem solving, and much less simplistic politics and magic wands.

> at perihelion Mars is about forty-three million kilometers closer to the sun than it is at aphelion, and thus receiving about 45 percent more
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sunlight. This fluctuation makes the southern and northern seasons quite unequal. Perihelion arrives every year at Ls = 250°, late in the southern spring; so southern springs and summers are much hotter than northern springs and summers, with peak temperatures as much as thirty degrees higher. Southern autumns and winters are colder, however, occurring as they do near aphelion— so much colder that the southern polar cap is mostly carbon dioxide, while the northern one is mostly water ice. So the south was the hemisphere of extremes, the north that of moderation. And the orbital eccentricity caused one other feature of note; planets move faster the closer they are to the sun, so the seasons near perihelion are shorter than those near aphelion
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LibraryThing member Radaghast
If we are going to terraform Mars, the Mars Trilogy is probably the most realistic guess on how it will go. Kim Stanley Robinson seamlessly weaves hard science fiction, and a human plot. He does not forget what some of his predecessors forget: In every science fiction adventure, there are real
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people involved and they may do unexpected things. The one criticism is Robinson's politics are extremely obvious. Ultimately, characters fall into two maybe three modes of thinking, and it isn't hard to guess which one Robinson favors. In the real world, there would be about five hundred different modes of thinking, and it would be much less clear who was good and who was bad.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
This trilogy is fascinating in concept, but its ideas are bogged down in the relationships between the characters, none of whom were memorable to me, so that the terraforming was almost incidental and became lost. Green Mars was more of the same and I never bothered with Blue Mars before selling
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these books.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
This was and somehow was not the novel I was expecting. I was expecting more of a close-quartered, infighting over basic resources and petty jealousies. What I got was a political novel that took place over many decades. It was interesting to see the different factions fighting for space and
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dominance. It turns out that the entity with the most power is as usual, the one with the most money. In this case, large trans-national corporations that have taken over commerce are the ones who have the most power.

A major theme is how Mars should be populated and run. It is treated like Antarctica is currently treated on earth. As property of no one, as a free resource to be accessed by all who want to and can afford to send expeditions to it. Unfortunately, this uncovers a greater problem. The northern hemisphere is the side with all the money. The southern hemisphere, has much less money and technology. The southern hemisphere has the population problems though. So the group with the money and technology to send people to Mars thinks they by rights, should control it and decide how it gets run and who gets to go. The southern hemisphere says that the population of Mars should follow the lines of greatest need, therefore they should get to send people by the millions. The problem there is that the people they would send would be among the least qualified to contribute in any real way, to the terraformation and settling of Mars.

But the transnationals control so much money that they can override much of what the individual countries want. The end up sending their own people up there and declaring themselves in charge of certain things. The big thing is transportation of minerals off of mars and its moon from there to earth. The problem is that shipping costs more than the value of the cargo. As soon as they find a way to make this cheaper, the transnationals take it over and then ask for huge tolls to use the mechanism.
They make huge demands on workers that basically amount to slavery.

The workers become angry and revolt. They strike, but it doesn’t do much good. So they begin to destroy equipment and whole stations. Eventually they destroy the transport system that makes mars profitable.

Another issue is over a new medical treatment that can slow aging. It addresses the cellular replication problem that advances as we age. Like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, our cells are less and less precise in their replication as we age. It is actually this problem that causes aging and many other associated symptoms. The treatment allows your 60 year old body to reproduce cells as perfect as they were when you were 10. They don’t know how long the effect will last, but many of the first 100 take the treatment and expect to live many more decades than everyone else. The treatment begins on Mars but soon, earth knows about it and everyone is clamoring for the treatment. Governments are clamoring for new laws (such as when you get to be over 100, you are automatically shipped to Mars). Individuals are clamoring for the treatment. It’s chaos.

In the end, the problems of the earth are repeating themselves on mars. It seems that no matter how far we progress, we still can’t stop being destructive, deceitful, cruel and violent.

The major interests are represented by the following characters:

Arkady – workers of the world unite, he believes each group of workers should stake their own claim and make their own money

Ann – leave the planet alone, we need to study it and not mess it up

Phyllis – big money, let’s get as much industry going as soon as possible and make as much profit as we can

John – law and order, wants to please everyone and peacefully coexist.

Hiroko – earth mother, wants to found a new eden on mars and populate it with her own children

Frank – major politico. Plays one faction off another in an effort to pursue his own agenda.

They all fight for their causes.
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LibraryThing member reading_fox
Superbly complex. Science fiction at its best, telling a gripping story but also blending in predictions about the future of mankind and the effect technology can have on society whilst also casting a sly glance at how we live today and the assumption of what we take to be normal.

Although it feels
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like the middle of a trilogy this is actually the first in the series - and I'm not sure the rest can possibly be as good. Divided up into sections, each of which is devoted to the POV of a single character, this is a very neat way of writing that explores multiple views of the same situation - although they are generally (with the very annoying exception of the prologue) sequential in time - it avoids the disruption to the reader that shorter intervals produces, whilst still giving the work a huge scope. The characters chosen are a few leading figures in the first 100 people sent as a scientific exploration team to Mars. The First Person on Mars John Boone has rejoined them - and the importance of his original journey - that we only hear about in passing reference, makes this feel like the middle of the trilogy. The tight focus of each section really allows the reader to emphasize with the thoughts behind the different characters and their positions on both sides and those of the moderates - the only one I struggled to comprehend was Michael.

Essentially a US/Russian operation additional funding from other countries enables a few members from elsewhere to join the team, but even on the 9month journey out other factions start forming within the team itself. Once on Mars itself the very act of forming a BaseCamp to work from splits the opinions - divisions which become ever more polarised. The basic issue is over impact - the balance between the 'Reds' who see mars as an unspoilt heritage to be carefully studied without contamination, and the others, who see it as a dead world of copious resources for the benefit of all mankind, the only question being over what timescale to extract them. The Martian years roll past, and the Treaty guiding the exploration is up for renewal, multi-nationals have become Transnationals with vast fortunes at stake. But even the 100 can't agree on the right course of action to take, some disappearing to avoid the compromises the rest may take, not in their name. And then the immigration begins, bringing tensions rocketing even higher.

Written in '93 we now know a lot more about Mars than we did, and some of the postulates - thick ice caps and under surface aquifers - seem a lot less likely. But as a metaphor for the Antarctic whose own Treaty is due for renewal in only a few more years - it has a lot to say. There are also wide ranging discussions over how society can and maybe should be shaped. Who makes the decisions that effect the lives of countless billions?

The couple of other points that grate; the Prologue that is set along way away from the start fo the story, so that it is hard to remember the details when it does appear. And KSR's dislike of characters called Frank. He's somewhat inexplicably weird in both this and KSRs other trilogy the Science in the Capitol series, hence even though they are worlds apart it is somewhat difficult to keep the two identically named characters seperate.

It is a very wide ranging book covering a huge array of themes very well. Gripping and insightful, full of meaning and thought. I received this as a free ebook from Tor. Their cunning plan has already succeeded; I've bought the other two, and will buy the rest of KSRs works. Go out and read it now.

.....................................................................................................
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LibraryThing member Ginerbia
A great story of colonizing Mars in the not-so-distant future. It describes the hardships the scientists went through when they were going through training in Antarctica, during the trip to Mars and when they finally get there. It also gets into the political impact colonizing Mars has on Earth.
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The different viewpoints of how to use the resources on Mars, whether or not to terraform Mars and the inevitable revolution that occurs as a result the many opposing views. Definitely worth reading the sequel Blue Mars - where the terraforming and revolution continues.
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LibraryThing member bilbette
Within the trilogy, this is the best of the three. Full of lots of different threads of interpersonal relationships, political intrigue and more. It covers the decisions and technical aspects of the first trips to Mars along with the adventure of dealing with Mars. All sorts of cool Mars info.
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After reading this first book, I felt like I really had an image of what Mars landscape looks like and the geography of the planet.

I love the way Robinson shows the process of a culture forming from a loose collection of people that have their different agendas, needs and personalities. Each of the relationships and history that this first book introduces is the foundation for the shape of a world society in the final book.

The claustrophobia of space travel, leads to the claustrophobia of contained spaces on a harsh planet in this first book. All of the stink and dust comes through in Robinson's writing. At the same time it sets us up to really feel the difference for the final book's contrasting expansiveness and freedom.

We see the pioneering risk takers evolve into shrewd politicians, wacked out crazies, conservative homebodies and more. The characters aren't just three dimensional, but four dimensional as you see fully fleshed out characters in the current moment change their beliefs and personalities due to events, relationships and circumstances over time. Most authors would have just stopped at creating a good three dimensional character, but Robinson goes that huge step further by making them truly realistic in how life changes them, each in their own way.
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LibraryThing member juniperSun
wooden. I got 2/3 of the way thru, skimmed the last 10 pages and decided to toss it. So much of it was based on lengthy talk of the local rocks. And when John Boone spent months traveling from communities, I wondered why such a hi tech place didn't have rapid transport yet. It might have some
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interesting economic theory, but the story didn't even carry it as well as Atlas Shrugged did Rand's.
Marina talking with John & Vlad: "...it should be the law that people are rewarded in proportion to their contribution to the system...There's all kinds of phantom work! Unreal values assigned to most of the jobs on Earth! The entire transnational executive class...Advertising, stock brokerage..." (p 298-9) This sounds exactly like John's role, yet we're supposed to believe this druggie (oh, but it's a legal drug) is a valued person in this tale.
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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
This started out and I was worried it was gonna be engineer fanfic, 600 pages of solutionism in space, but as it unfolded it became clear Robinson had bigger ambitions (this is the first of three novels, the colour in the title changing from red to green to blue as the terraforming of Mars proceeds
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apace).He gets into the larger philosophical issues of "man versus nature" and its limits as a view but also the useful limits adopting it as a perspective places on our field of action--as it plays out via the exporting of the anthropocene to other planets. He gets into what kind of new cultural forms we would expect, the various ways we'd bring old pathologies with us and also try to transcend them. And when the "first 100" scientist-explorers are inevitably followed by wildcatters and corporate sharks and NWO thugs, he looks at all the many ways best-laid plans for revolution and reinvention can go spectacularly awry, taking full advantage of the hostile Martian landscape to write disaster after catastrophe (the UN breaking open titanic aquifers and for-real flooding what we used to think were canals, the "Bogdanovists" bringing down the space elevator, the first 100 literally slowing down the moon Phobos enough to send it crashing into the planet. It's great fun). Robinson's future world is a Malthusian nightmare with no "rise of the South"; the US and Russia (the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the end of the USSR) are still tenuous top dogs in 2050, China and India are teeming giants filled with peasants, broke and ready to charge the walls separating them from the West (and Mars); the UN still pretends to "world government." Perhaps relatedly, he failed to understand the kind of American hegemony that was coming under neoliberalism, in the cultural realm in particular: everyone is so essentialized and exotic--the Swiss colonists (the Swiss!) say things like "They are outsiders. Ausländer"; and someone seems to have told Robinson that the main sects of Islam are "regular" Muslims and "Sufi mystics," with no reference to the Sunni/Shiite split etc.; and in short it is poor futurism in that sense. The main new supertransnational coprorations are "Praxis," "Armscor," and "Subarashii," and on the whole he is enamoured with the "special characteristics" of Japanese civilization in a way that is coming to seem increasingly characteristic of that time, the swelling and bursting of the bubble. ("Giri" makes an appearance; "shikata ga nai" does too; to say nothing of the fact that no Japanese corporation is gonna call itself "subarashii," ever (means fantastic), there's a cultural observation for you Kim Stanley Robinson).

So on the whole this seems less like a convincing vision of what colonization of Mars would be like if it ever happened (to us, now, surely, it seems less likely that it will ever even happen in any future we can glimpse?) than a swashbuckling sciencey space tale, with chills and spills and mysteries and endless incredible Martian landscapes. The terraforming stuff is just damn cool, and even if the colonists' various factional efforts to create a "Mars for the Martians" and/or sell it to Subarashii and Praxis dovetail with the present horrible global-capitalist/worldwide-lumpenprecariat moment and are resonant, if the details are shaky. It would have made a great smart blockbuster film if we hadn't stopped caring about space and gotten into superheroes instead.
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LibraryThing member martialalex92
Could have shaved off 100 pages of describing martian topology. Also strange choice to have assassination attempts on the protagonist as the subplot to the main plot about international deal-making. Like we can get 5 pages on what erosion does to canyon formation but if John almost gets killed we
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got less than a paragraph of emotional turmoil before we were back to contract disputes
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LibraryThing member vibrantminds
One hundred colonists in pursuit of colonizing Mars; each with their own specialties and agendas to improve the barren planet. Amongst deception, greed, and love the dream begins to enfold for some while others are horrified at the outcome. More colonists arrive and a bit of chaos and eventual
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civil war pursue claiming Mars for itself once again. A few of the first 100 survive and are left with only their dreams of again pursuing to make Mars what they had originally hoped it to be.
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LibraryThing member Luminous-Path
Got to 67%. I enjoyed what I read, and stopped when it was becoming a chore. I leave the book with good memories of it.

Language

Original publication date

1992-09

ISBN

0553560735 / 9780553560732
Page: 3.7458 seconds