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Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
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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 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. ( )
  SendersName | Nov 11, 2009 |
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 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. ( )
  sturlington | Sep 18, 2009 |
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, 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. ( )
1 vote storyjunkie | Aug 23, 2009 |
This is the third Robinson title that I've read and it will probably be the last. I appreciate the grand scale of the book and its insight into the sociology of the colonists. I think, as a textbook, it may be instructive at some time in the future. I should say that I enjoy character-driven science fiction and this is nothing if not that. However, as an entertaining novel it falls short. It drags in many places. There are a lot of holes in the plot and in the underlying assumptions - the speed with which the colony becomes self-sufficient, the ability of one group to move out on their own with very few resources and no reasonable way to create their own - these oversights bothered me. I like that the characters are not black and white and are fleshed out quite well. But even here some of their actions seem to make them into caricatures. Without giving away any plot points I don't think Frank's actions toward John are explained nor do they seem consistent with his personality. Arkady, who we don't know very well, seems to go to extremes. I think Robinson needs the characters to represent various viewpoints and often sacrifices realistic personalities when he does so. The book gave me a lot to think about but I had enough problems with it that I don't plan to read the rest of the trilogy. ( )
  TheBook | Aug 20, 2009 |
Rereading after 15 years this first book in Robinson's magisterial Mars trilogy, I was struck once again by the immense amount of planning and research that must have gone into it. This volume is actually fairly pessimistic, but there are many grace notes that point the way toward Robinson's more usual hopefulness. ( )
1 vote wanack | Aug 12, 2009 |
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Lisa
First words
Mars was empty before we came.
Quotations
"We became friends first," Arkady said once, "that's what makes this different, don't you think?" He prodded her with a finger. "I love you."
When you expect to live another two hundred years, you behave differently from when you expect to live only twenty.
Possess nothing and be possessed by nothing. Put away what you have in your head, give what you have in your heart.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (2)

Kava

Mars trilogy

Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0553560735, Mass Market Paperback)

Red Mars opens with a tragic murder, an event that becomes the focal point for the surviving characters and the turning point in a long intrigue that pits idealistic Mars colonists against a desperately overpopulated Earth, radical political groups of all stripes against each other, and the interests of transnational corporations against the dreams of the pioneers.

This is a vast book: a chronicle of the exploration of Mars with some of the most engaging, vivid, and human characters in recent science fiction. Robinson fantasizes brilliantly about the science of terraforming a hostile world, analyzes the socio-economic forces that propel and attempt to control real interplanetary colonization, and imagines the diverse reactions that humanity would have to the dead, red planet.

Red Mars is so magnificent a story, you will want to move on to Blue Mars and Green Mars. But this first, most beautiful book is definitely the best of the three. Readers new to Robinson may want to follow up with some other books that take place in the colonized solar system of the future: either his earlier (less polished but more carefree) The Memory of Whiteness and Icehenge, or 1998's Antarctica. --L. Blunt Jackson

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400)

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