Some books are well nigh impossible to review. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is one of them. My reason for this feeling is this is so very obviously the first of the three books in the Mars Trilogy – the stage setting, the laying of the foundation for more to come…

As such it is a good one, I think.

In many ways this is Big Ideas fiction, and I’m an avid fan of every book that makes me think. The grandness of the scale is impressive, a multi-decade storyline involving a lot of people, both as individuals and as pieces in a jigsaw too big for them to fathom. The main characters are mostly scientists, with little idea of how they and their side taking affects the world or how they and their ideas will come back at them, with a political twist.

The way the story plays out is plausible, if depressing, but I am eager to get to know how this social, economic and political experiment will develop.

On the down side this is very clearly about people and systems of people – normally known as “societies” and their close kin “political systems” and “economic system” – and not about individuals. Sure, we follow certain characters, but in a distanced third person, and only for a short while – the story is told from multiple perspectives, and these perspectives shifts every now and then. These characters are there to illustrate different viewpoints and different ideas about who to tackle a situation, and sometimes this is too obvious.

Sometimes the text feels like an embellished piece of non fiction, veritable info dumps that gets no less info dumpish by being real science.

Finally, the text is somewhat dated. It plays out in a reality where the US and Russia were still THE dominant actors. This, honestly, doesn’t bother me much. Politics is politics, just like economics is economics – the name tags are not as important as the actual system, and the basic premise that he stipulates is not that far fetched.

All in all it works quite well and at the moment I’m staring at the door waiting for the next instalment – Green Mars – to be delivered; the SF bookshop was out of stock, so I had to order it from another source. (I do favour brick’n'mortar bookshops, I want them to stay in business, so I try to use those I particularly fancy. No luck this time, though.)

I should say that this is not a book to read as distraction. It needs a focussed mind to work, as evidenced by the fact that I had to put it down for a while – since my previous post here I’ve had planned tonsillectomy, followed by high levels of pain and its mitigator (codeine based painkillers, yuk /but that’s another story/) and what felt like a fried brain. During that time – almost two weeks – I either didn’t read at all, or did feel-good rereads.

I’m very glad that I picked Red Mars up again, as it ultimately was a rewarding read.

(Note that this is the exact same review as the one I have published on my blog) ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

A hundred hand-picked colonists travel to Mars; they create a loose-knit scientific settlement, not unlike one of the Antarctic bases, and set to work. Their little utopia slowly begins to chafe against later settlement; twenty years down the line, there are half a million people on Mars, terraforming and industrialising is underway, and the power is shifting into the hands of the multinational corporations. By an authorial sleight of hand (a life-extension treatment), our original protagonists are still around, and we see them schisming and splintering over how best to respond to it. Fifteen years further on, and there are restive shantytowns of migrant workers clustered around the cities, with power firmly in corporate hands. A strike, a riot, and suddenly a spasmodic and messy revolution. Some of our protagonists are ringleaders, some are trapped in it; but none of them can control it.

There's a nice pattern to it; the journey and the settlement, a growing and flourishing society, and then it begins to decay under outside pressures. After attempts to shore it up fail, we go back down the same path; settlement is replaced by destruction, with the painstakingly built townships wrecked, and our viewpoint characters are forced to flee in desperation, on a new and harder journey, through the irrevocable effects human terraforming has had on the planet. It's not a happy end, but it's a convincing one - and there is a sequel, after all.

Mars is beautifully described - Robinson has a certain way of writing about desolation, and it comes across well. The last section, a long journey across the changing planet to safety, really brings this out; you get the feeling that this is a real place, not a fictional construct.

I'm pleasantly surprised on re-reading; some elements I only vaguely remember seem a lot more prominent. The whole quasi-mythical status of the First Hundred, for example; the passage of people reminiscing about John Boone, which quietly shifts from "where were you when he died?" through ever more ludicrous stories - two of which we know to be untrue - until the stories switch to Paul Bunyan retellings, and the shift is complete. The background of the characters is interesting to re-examine - the First Hundred are explicitly stated to be mostly American & Russian, with a few foreigners; the settlements later are said to be from a wide range of countries, but we only ever seem to see a close focus on the Arabs (and occasionally the Swiss). I'm not sure why, but I suspect deliberate authorial choice to only write what he was comfortable with trying to get right. No-one seems to be excessively stupid or uncharacteristic, though it would have been nice were Hiroko and her farmers not quite so clichédly enigmatic.

All this aside, it caught me, this third or fourth time through, for an entirely unexpected reason.

There's a scene mid-way through the book where Boone, the first man on Mars, reflects on growing old. He was born in 1982, and is now in his sixties. I first read this in, what, 1999-2000? My generation landing on Mars in 2020 was just about conceivable. Now... well, we're debating whether or not we'll fit a sample-return mission in by that year. Of course, it's obsoleted itself before then. It's post-Soviet, but at the same time not really; the Russians and Americans are still effective superpowers, and there's passing talk of "the Commonwealth" in that weird federal-state way people expected the CIS might turn into. It's a little sad, to have it presented like that. It might still happen; it might even happen somewhat like this, barring the changes to Mars we've learned over the years. But it won't ever happen to us like this.

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 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.

..................................................................................................... ( )

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 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.

I have this little self-imposed rule that I'm not allowed to use any of the words in a book's title (including sub-) as its tag. It can make things difficult if, say, I have a book about Mars titled Red Mars. Or a book about zombies and survival titled The Zombie Survival Guide. But shikata ga nai. Luckily this book touched on oodles of different subjects so I wasn't in any danger of running out of tag words.

I really liked how the POV changed among the characters in each chapter so you saw things in a somewhat different light, particularly with regard to Frank and John. John's chapter even read at times like a detective story, which brought a nice change of pace. The other characters were interesting and nicely distinct as well, although they didn't act their age. Even in the beginning of the book, before the longevity treatments, when they were in their 40s and 50s, most of them seemed at least twenty years younger—bickering and moody. Not to mention in the end when some of them were closer to ninety. But that's not a bad thing necessarily, being full of life and spunk. Otherwise it was very believable (apart also maybe from the ridiculous idea of warming the atmosphere with thousands of little wind-powered heaters), too believable some might even say. To documentary-like. Not me, but I must admit that sometimes the exhaustive explanations bordered on exhausting indeed.

So it was a great book, not too slow going notwithstanding the occasional lengthy landscape description, which I sometimes had difficulty imagining because of the vastness of it all ("the chasm was 25 kilometers across", "river with a flux of a hundred Amazons") and had to dash to my computer to look at closeups of Mars. I can't give it five stars, but it was easily good enough to make me want to read the next part of the trilogy. ( )

If one pretended that humans really did settle on Mars, this book is like a Discovery Channel/PBS dramatized info-documentary on the process of settling Mars. We read about the lives of the people and their squabbles, plus all the details of building a habitat and society in a new land.

It's not bad, but it's not terribly interesting either.

There is some plot but it's buried under tons of the (very creative) details about settling Mars. This doesn't make it bad, it just makes it... err... unsuspenseful. If you would like detailed descriptions of how a Mars survival suit, space ship or habitat would work, or how a new society would work out their political differences, this is a great book. If you like a mystery or action or wondering "what will happen next" in a story, you probably will be bored with this.

I can't bring myself to spend any more time finishing this book. ( )

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 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? ( )

http://a1018.g.akamai.net/f/1018/1902...

An outstanding novel. One hundred people are selected to go and establish a colony on Mars, and it looks at the physical, intellectual and psychological testing that is undergone to get into that group.

The main part of the book though is the travel and establishment of a base on Mars, and the relationships and conflicts that develop, particularly among the leaders of the group.

Research discovers a longevity treatment, and this has serious side effects on an Earth in crisis. Political factions develop on Mars on the best way to develop or not develop the planet, and whether to take any crap from the growing influence of Earth corporate power.

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2009/03/re... ( )

http://a1018.g.akamai.net/f/1018/1902...

An outstanding novel. One hundred people are selected to go and establish a colony on Mars, and it looks at the physical, intellectual and psychological testing that is undergone to get into that group.

The main part of the book though is the travel and establishment of a base on Mars, and the relationships and conflicts that develop, particularly among the leaders of the group.

Research discovers a longevity treatment, and this has serious side effects on an Earth in crisis. Political factions develop on Mars on the best way to develop or not develop the planet, and whether to take any crap from the growing influence of Earth corporate power.

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2009/03/re... ( )

Robinson's finest hour as a story teller - the first 100 settlers on Mars and the consequences of their intervention in the life of the planet ( )

The first in Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Mars Trilogy' this book receives all sorts of high accolades, winner of the 1993 Nebula award for best novel, Arthur C Clarke no less has called this the best book ever written about the colonisation of Mars and should be required reading for future colonists! The first question then is does it deserve such lauded trumpeting? Well, in my opinion, yes it does, to a degree. It deals with the first 100 colonists to arrive on Mars and tells of the consequences of colonising the planet and the economic and social changes that then follows with other people coming to the planet determined to make money, to make their mark or to try and keep the planet intact for future generations.
There is a lot of hard science fact here but not too much to drown out the very human voices of the characters as they struggle with adapting to the new planet and problems. Because of the way in which it is written (the book is divided into eight parts all being narrated by a different person) you get a very rounded view of the arguements helping to explain why it all seems to go so horribly wrong so horribly fast leading to revolt and uprisings.
There are unfortunately some aspects to the novel that seem to be papered over and not substantiated or explained fully, for example Earth seems to be on the brink of an economic, political and social explosion with resources strained to the very limits and space at a premium (hence the desperate journey to Mars in the first place), despite this the colonists seem to be the most fully equipped, funded expedition I have ever read of, even in the realms of fiction. I struggled towards the end of Red Mars as well, with the remnants of the original 100 colonists escaping the revolutions the book seemed, to me, to drag on a bit but I am undaunted and look forward readily to the sequel Green Mars and I hope this might help to answer some of the unanswered questions from Red Mars and maybe even lead me to re-read it and give it 4 stars.
At the moment however even though I would happily recommend this book but I do not think I would read it again so it is 3 out of 5 from me. ( )

"In 2019, the first man sets foot on Mars: John Boone, American hero".

8 years later sees the first of the Trilogy of the First one hundred to leave Earth to colonise Mars. This books follows their voyage from Earth to Mars and how they try to make the planet liveable for future groups.

However as the story develops you begin to see how the ideas of the group start to differ from those of the large TransNats back on Earth who see Mars as a solution to the ever increasing shortages and problems on Earth.

All of which leads to, at the end of the part book, revolution and destruction of the TransNats link to the planet. As well as the death of the leader of the First One Hundred.

The book at times was very dry and seemed to be there to show us that the author was clever and could explain many high brow equations and ideas. Take out this though and you come down to a good story - the struggle to succeed in a new place. And how to live with people who do not always share your ideals.

Read it but be patient with it at times. But you will be rewarded! ( )

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. ( )

This book was not really what I expected. My friend had told me he didn't really like it, that is was more like a "documentary" on Mars... so I expected some hard sci-fi. Well, it has a lot of hard sci-fi as it deals some with the terraforming of Mars, but what I found was a novel that is strongly character driven. The book is broken into several sub-books, each that focuses on one of the main characters for hundreds of pages. There is a lot of character development and that was good. Now, I felt it dragged in a couple places but this rendition of the settling of Mars is a good one. ( )

My parents were in the habit of buying me new authors, and when I got this book as a present they had chosen an excellent novel.

Set in the plausibly near future, the governments of the world have finally gotten serious about the colonisation of space, and so the First Hundred, a select group of highly trained applied scientists from fields of geology, chemistry, medicine, engineering, and more, are sent on the nine-month trip to Mars.

In putting together this novel, Robinson entered into a dialogue with members of the AMES research labs to get a feel for how an interplanetary expedition might work. This has certainly paid off, as the technical detail of the colonisation process is both elaborate and feasible, and continues to be so despite the books coverage of about 30 years. There are some rather large leaps in the science of the book, however, particularly with regards to the biological sciences, but these are excusable as being rational and also just helping the storyline.

The book has three main protagonists - John Boone, "The First Man on Mars", who had already visited Mars in a short expedition before the book's timeframe - Frank Chalmers, his friend and joint co-ordinator in the Mars missions - and Maya Toitovna, the apex of a love triangle with the two male leads.

However, this weight volume is not restricted to the behaviour of just one or all of these three characters - and the book offers viewpoints from several others out of the hundred colonists.

Unlike works such as Frank Herbert's Dune, and Peter F Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction, Robinson keeps with a single character for long stretches of the book, giving you time to associate and sympathise with them. Also, Robinson doesn't waste time on an introduction to the characters, and actually goes so far as to start the book in the middle of the story, and then pull back to when the colonists were on their way to Mars. Essentially, Robinson just gets on with the important part of the story, and that is going to Mars and then dealing with the events following that moment.

Robinson followed up this title with another two books - Green Mars and Blue Mars. The colour choices indicating not only how the landscape changes in time on the planet after humans start terraforming the world, but also the attitudes towards the planet of the peoples who will be living there in the future.
The second book is as gripping and interesting as the first, but I find the final book to have degenerated into more of a soapbox for Robinson to espouse his feelings on the directions we are heading in right here and now on Earth, and at the expense of good storytelling.

All said, though, Red Mars is an excellent addition to anyone's science fiction collection and, who knows, it may even become a prophetic tale of what is to come. ( )

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 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. ( )

This is one of those rare books that I didn't want to end, even knowing that there are two more in the series! The story of the first humans who explore, colonize, and terraform mars is one of the most absorbing novels I have ever read, whether science fiction or not. The characters are three-dimensional, and the issues they face in their determination not to repeat the mistakes made here on Earth--environmentally, economically, socially--are ones that we 21st century human can readily identify with.

~sharon ( )

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.

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. ( )

An outstanding novel. One hundred people are selected to go and establish a colony on Mars, and it looks at the physical, intellectual and psychological testing that is undergone to get into that group.

The main part of the book though is the travel and establishment of a base on Mars, and the relationships and conflicts that develop, particularly among the leaders of the group.

Research discovers a longevity treatment, and this has serious side effects on an Earth in crisis. Political factions develop on Mars on the best way to develop or not develop the planet, and whether to take any crap from the growing influence of Earth corporate power.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/01/red-mars-kim-stanley-robinson.html ( )

It seems that readers are pretty evenly split on this series: some people were bored out of their minds, while others loved it. Personally, I thought this was a great beginning to what turned out to be a pretty good trilogy. Robinson does a good job of setting up conflicting priorities within a group of scientists which establishes the first settlements on Mars. The differing goals and of preservationists and terraformers create plenty of tension, not to mention the frequently diverging interests of the scientists on Mars with those of the government back on earth that sponsored the expedition in the first place. The most memorable aspect of Red Mars is its frequently poetic descriptions of the characters' immersion in the awe-inspiring majesty and beauty of the alien landscape. The plot is driven by the actions of small group of natural leaders within the colonizing scientists--interesting, though not always likeable characters. The beginning is odd from a narrative flow point of view, but certainly captures your attention. ( )