Blue Mars

Blue Mars is a novel I often found easier to admire than to enjoy, but it was worthwhile in the end. The conclusion to Robinson's Mars Trilogy begins with the terraforming of the planet Mars essentially complete in the late 22nd century. Mars has recently asserted its independence from Earth's governments and Earth's corporations, but it doesn't yet have a government of its own. Forming that government is the chief concern of the first half of the novel. In the second half the principal issue is how much immigration to allow, and how fast. Along the way, however, their are numerous side trips into other political, social and scientific issues.

The novel is structured just like its predecessors, in long chapters each from the perspective of one of several principal characters. Thanks to the longevity treatments, these characters are essentially the same as the cast of Red Mars and Green Mars, only they are now around 200 years old. There is only one new major character introduced, late in the novel, and in my opinion this was the book's best chapter.

There are long discourses on such subjects as political science, economics, aging, the study of memory, weather, and, of course, geology (or, more properly, areology). There are also some lengthy chapters featuring solitary ramblings in the wilderness, flying, boating, or other forms of recreation. Like a Wagner opera, this is a work that will not be rushed, and it's best to sit back and sink into the mood of the piece without worrying that nothing much is going to happen for a long while.

Blue Mars offers an appealing vision on where our species might be headed, socially and technologically. There are also some thought-provoking debates on issues relevant to our own time. It could easily have been about 200 pages shorter, though. Because of frequent references back to events in the previous volumes, I would recommend that if you are going to read the trilogy, you treat it as a three-volume novel and not let your memory of the earlier volumes get stale. ( )

The final book in this fabulous trilogy, and it manages to round the series off most satisfactorily, though not too neatly. This has been an unforgettable series of books for me, full of wonders and so believably and cleverly written that you can't help but dream of the day that life may immitate art, and mankind can begin to inhabit Mars with the real life equivalents of the characters that have become like old friends - Nadia, Ann, Frank, John, Sax, Maya, Coyote and all the rest. My one quibble with the whole series is the leisurely pace and somewhat meandering story archs. I would question whether this novel was really improved by, for example, about twenty pages on the brain chemistry involved in creating memories. Much of it is fascinating stuff, but when there are so many wonderfully drawn characters, experiencing such incredible events and breathtaking sights, all the hard science is an uneccessary distraction - for my tastes at least. This shouldn't detract from what a fanastic achievement the whole series is - full of things that will stay with you for a lifetime of reading, and will change the way you see the universe and the people who, maybe one day, will populate it far beyond our home shores. ( )

I tried to love this trilogy. Really, I wanted to love this book too... As I said before he basic concept is absolutely fascinating. To see the Mars terraforming, to imagine what it's like.... To watch the political skirmises of a new world... But I'm sorry to say, sometimes it's damn boring written. It would be a so better read without a few hundred pages. A great pity.... ( )

Overall, this was probably my second favorite of the "Color Mars" Trilogy. I was very slow to get into it. However, by this point Robinson has refined almost all of his main characters, making them all very interesting and flesh-out, as opposed to the one-dimensional cyphers they were in Red Mars. I even liked Ann and Maya this time round, though it took me until almost the end of the book for the former.

The only viewpoint character I didn't really like was Jackie's daughter Zo; she was definitely the worst viewpoint character across all three books. Hiroko was actually bearable this time around, mostly because she spent the entire book missing. This was good, because I'd never really bought Hiroko as a character; she was always felt unmotivated to me, and I could never figure out why she was held in such high esteem; I personally just felt she was weird. Unfortunately Nirgal, Art, and Nadia draw the short-straw here after some wonderful fleshing out in Green Mars; the latter two's character arc is just kinda dropped and never concluded.

Throughout most of the book, my real problem was that I didn't really know what it was about. Red was about the colonizing and first revolution; Green was about the second revolution. Though Blue was initially about building a new Martian government (and there was some neat stuff here), the middle of the book felt pretty aimless to me. The end introduced the immigration crisis, but it was at this time I realized what the book was actually about.

Unlike the first two, Blue Mars is not really about the history of Mars. This novel is about long life, and the problems of living the centuries that the First Hundred can. Michel returning home to Provencal was one of the best parts of the novel; the looking-back provided was wonderful. Maya coping with her increasing distance from her own past (a plotline introduced in Green) was also very interesting. Sax's determination to solve this problem gave a strong focus to the end of the novel, because we saw through him and through Maya just how serious this memory problem was.

The best part of the problem was, well... the solution. The scene where Sax summons the remaining Hundred to Underhill, and they take the treatment was downright wonderful. If any part of the book was going to move me to tears, this was it. Sax's almost stream-of-consciousness rush of memories was extraordinary. The ending was also great in that it finally restored the bond the Hundred had had during the journey on the Ares but lost since. As the memories poured in, for the first time in centuries, the Hundred understood one another once more, and lost the distance that had been created between them. Sax and Ann finally figuring out why they were antagonists was great; as were the two brief bits with them rock climbing and sailing. (By the by, Sax's boat is almost as cool as the Zygote boulder-cars. Almost.)

Though I have had much praise for the book here, I would still place it second beneath Green Mars because of its lack of a strong plotline (the memory thing and coping with being so old is more of a theme until the very end) but above the plodding story and one-dimensional characters of Red Mars. (originally written August 2004)

A long hard SF book. Large cast of characters whose psychological interactions are minutely detailed. Unfortunately these characters are either boring, humorless or unpleasant, frequently they are all three. Consequentially it is difficult to give a shit about any of them or this book. ( )