Green Mars (1993)

Green Mars is is very much a continuation of the story started in Red Mars, but the focus has definitely shifted from engineering to political philosophy. We learn that Earth is now dominated by mega-corporations who want to extend their influence to Mars, while the inhabitants of Mars want to push back this influence and institute self-government. However, the people of Mars face two major problems: overcoming the significant financial and military resources of the Earth corporations, and trying to figure out how they want to govern themselves given their myriad backgrounds, beliefs, and philosophies. The entire book really highlights these struggles; the focus of this book definitely contrasts with the ponderousness (and wonder) of Red Mars. However, while science and engineering have definitely taken a back seat in the story, I still found Green Mars to be very engaging and thought-provoking, just in somewhat different ways. ( )

My reaction to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.

This was an excellent novel, but I didn’t like it as well as Robinson’s Red Mars, the first in the series.

Part of that, I’m sure, is simply the wearing off of the first novel’s novelty. The landscape descriptions of this novel seemed more prevalent but less interesting than Red Mars. That may be due to reading two long novels with the same sort of thing in them. However, I think there are more descriptions of the evolving Martian landscape here than in the earlier book. Furthermore, this landscape is more Earthlike as compared to the sublime, alien desolations (particularly Red Mars’ scene where Ann Clayborne shows black garnet sand dunes to Nadia) of Red Mars which were so interesting.

Also, this novel is much more characteristic of Robinson’s tendency to write what are, in effect, speculative essays with enough drama (and characters) to be labeled as fiction. Red Mars did not have a linear plot, had a book ending with John Boone’s murder, had a lot of inherent drama in showing the First Hundred splitting into murderous factions and ended with a destructive war. (Boone looms, like his murderer Frank Chalmers, large as a legendary figure over this book.) In short, it had drama and physical action.

This novel’s plot is straightforward and much more cerebral. That's not a bad thing given the discussions of economics, politics, and history. (I still find Robinson’s economic ideals, particularly the ludicrous combination of capitalism and communalism silly (land, air, and water are common property as is human labor yet human labor’s fruits belong to the individual). It ends not with a violent revolution changing the political order on Mars. The model of the American Revolution is specifically rejected in Red Mars for, amongst other reasons, the vulnerability of the infrastructure that supports life on an unterraformed Mars and the inability of the land itself to support life. Rather, we have a “velvet revolution” on the model of those that toppled the Soviet Union – the authorities simply give up challenging massive civil disobedience. Where Red Mars ended with the violent destruction of human cities and Martian landscape, Green Mars ends with only the city of Burroughs being destroyed. Red Mars featured murder and war. The most violent incidents in this book – Maya Toitovna’s killing of Phyllis Boyle, Sax Russell’s rescue from the prison city of Kasei Vallis and its eventual destruction – are given very little space in a 535 page book.

Most of this book is taken up with characterization and the exploration of political and economic ideas and landscape descriptions. I also think it would have been better served with a more detailed map. Robinson’s detailed landscape descriptions can be confusing – especially since he is no doubt drawing from detailed surface maps of Mars.

There was much I liked here. Robinson skill in the “literary” school of writing is impressive as he is able, through technological and scientific metaphor (his use of this technique – so often associated with cyberpunks – is not as flashy but as extensive), symbolism, plotting, and character to carry his themes through a long book juxtapose them, and wrap them up neatly at the end. The tension between Red and Green visions of Mars runs throughout the book, is unresolved, and seems a more intractable difference than the various political/economic visions of Mars' future (as shown in a sort of constitutional convention in Dorsa Brevia – or, more accurately, a declaration of principles and independence).

Robinson also plays around with his characteristic concern for history and its meaning. History is thought of, by Nadia, as possibly a Lamarckian process. A sort of Marxian (in the sense of man progressing through economic stages of development) vision of man’s political/economic past and future is laid out. (Robinson subscribes to the shopworn notion of a future improbably dominated by transnational and “metanational” companies though the end of his novel – where nations simply seize corporate property – points out its absurdity.) Robinson also nicely combines the psychological effects of longevity treatments (most of the First Hundred have problems remembering their early days on Mars) and speculation on the meaning of history in the character of Maya. She wonders what the use of longevity is if old people, like the young, can not use the supposed benefit of a long life – experience. Are old people damaged by life, their capacity for optimism and idealism crippled or do they benefit from wisdom bought by experience? When she begins to suspect Chalmers had Boone killed, she finds herself having to read history books to find out what was really happening with her lovers – and she finds the books of little help, filled with bad information or observations that bear little resemblance to her life. What lessons can be drawn from history when the accounts of it seem to have so little truth in them and the memories of even those who lived history are so unreliable?

The “Scientist as Hero” section would, in other hands, be a daring tale of revolutionary espionage as Sax Russell goes underground with an assumed identity to spy on the transnationals. Here, though, it is merely a fascinating portrayal of a man who sees everything through rational, scientific eyes – a man forever classifying things, calculating results, even calmly observing and noting his own emotions of fear and sexual attraction. (He does a fair job of trying to escape after Boyle discovers his identity.) I liked seeing the world through his calm, curious eyes, and I liked his transformation into “the mad scientist” of the revolution, motivated in part by his “rational” conclusion that the current political setup on Mars and Earth can not sustain itself and his pain and brain damage at the hands of security force torturers. He develops a formidable passion for building weapons, a scientific and aesthetic love of Mars and the life slowly taking it over, and a desire to rid the world of government thugs like those who tortured him.

I also found the book’s other mad scientist, Ann Clayborne, fascinating though I disagreed with her radical Red agenda. (She goes from being merely vigorous opponent of terraforming to an active saboteur of it.) She reminded me – particularly when she’s at her most mad in “The Long Runout” section of this book and “Shikata Ga Nai” in Red Mars, her most withdrawn and melancholy – of schizophrenic Pris Frauenzimmer in Philip K. Dick’s We Can Build You. The resemblance may not be coincidental since Robinson is quite familiar with Dick’s work having done a PhD dissertation on them.

The First Hundred still are the most interesting: Nadia for trying to prevent another destructive war, Maya for being a charismatic, though old revolutionary. While this book features just as many – if not more – massive engineering projects, they seem less interesting though more grand. I think this is because so many are off stage or not directed by the familiar First Hundred (now the First Thirty-Nine). (Indeed Maya stands in awe of the “pharonic” powers of engineering the young Martians take for granted.) I liked that young Jackie and Maya can’t stand each other because they are so similar though neither realizes this. Of the new, younger characters diplomat Art Randolph – a more cheerful, optimistic version of cynical Chalmers – and Nirgal are the most interesting. (Though I expected Robinson to do more with Nirgal’s freakish ability to sense the exact temperature and raise the temperature on parts of his body.)

I liked the ending where Robinson neatly wraps up several themes. The process of aeroforming the mind and culture – the Martian landscape changing men’s minds and cultures and politics and economics – is neatly linked with the other process going on throughout the novel: the terraforming of the planet. This is all done when the inhabitants of Burroughs must flee into the Martian desert and walk the surface with only coats and filter masks and not walkers and helmets. A new social order has been born and its members embrace the new Martian landscape on more natural terms, a unity of Martian civilization is reached or, at least, made closer. A new type of Mars – its future – politically or climatologically – uncertain, has been born. This is something biblical about the trek away from the soon-to-be-destroyed Burroughs, a flight from slavery to the old order, a walk to the promised land. ( )

The first work of Robinson's Mars Trilogy, Red Mars, was an exciting story of discovery and survival that introduced the fascinating technical and philosophical issues surrounding the decision to terraform the red planet. In Green Mars the colonization of Mars is well established, the terraforming well under way, and the issues are social and political rather than technical (not that there isn't still an abundance of scientific information and debate presented to the reader). The key issue is Mars' relationship to Earth and the multi-national corporations which are now in charge. Is Mars to continue to be a colony whose mineral resources are siphoned off to meet the needs of the home planet, or is it to be an independent world building its own future?

It is perhaps inevitable that the level of excitement in Red Mars cannot be sustained into the sequel. The important, and sometimes cataclysmic, events are now happening on Earth, to be learned of only second hand. And the vital issues are now not so much scientific as economic, a field in which the author seems less at home. In fact the economic basis for the massive effort involved in settling and terraforming Mars remains largely a mystery throughout the novel.

So rather than a thrill ride into the unknown, Green Mars is a novel that invites sober reflection on the nature of economic imperialism and the perils of unregulated corporate capitalism. It also reflects, albeit from a vast distance, upon the dangers of population growth, economic stratification, and climate change.

By means of dramatic medical advances, the author keeps the surviving characters from Red Mars around for several more decades so they continue to be the principal characters in Green Mars. They are not reintroduced, so it is advisable to read the two books as closely together as you can so you remember who's who. A peek ahead into Blue Mars reveals the same character names, so the entire trilogy is best treated as a three-volume novel. ( )

In the second book of Robinson's Mars trilogy the terraforming of Mars continues. The remaining of the "First Hundred" and their followers are living (mostly literally) underground in various communities. The whole terraforming story and the descriptions of the mars fractions is fascinating and beliveable but the book has a huge weakness. Sometimes it's utterly boring... Regularly repeating endless descritiptions of the surface of Mars, long philosophizing leading nowhere...It's a shame because as I said before the basic plot's great. ( )

Like most sequels, I found Green Mars to be less enjoyable than its predecessor. Red Mars was an adventure--the colonization of Mars--filled with plenty of sci-fi background. Green was just as geeky, but "explore strange new worlds" was replaced by meetings, politics and Martian spirituality. (spi-fi?)
--J. ( )