Red Mars

This is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic Mars Trilogy. It imagines the initial human colonization of Mars, starting with a significant incident, then flashing back to relate the sequence of events that led up to that point. The narrative focuses on a handful of characters, primarily the pioneering men and women of the scientific community who are among the “first one hundred,” a mix of Americans, Russians, Arabs, and other international representatives. Eventually more people arrive from many different cultures, bringing with them different religions, beliefs, and customs.

The world-building is vivid, easy to picture. The technology is explained in detail. Beyond the scientific principles and world-building, I am show more impressed by the emphasis on the importance of human interactions and group dynamics. Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view. The characters have their own personalities, agendas, jealousies, and ideas of how the new civilization should be organized. Differences in opinion will inevitably arise, requiring debates and decision-making. For example, imagine the different opinions on whether to terraform or not, and if so, to what extent. Should future arrivals, sponsored by corporations, be able to extract minerals and send them back to earth? What type of economics, politics, laws, and processes should be established? They split into factions based on opinions held in common.

I appreciate both the science and the emphasis on human foibles. It is almost overwhelming to imagine all the elements involved in starting from scratch to build a society, and the author does a masterful job. This book is almost sure to please fans of hard science fiction. I loved it! show less

I first read Kim Stanley Robinson's (KSR) Red Mars not long after it first came out in 1992. Although I went on to acquire copies of the following books in the trilogy, Green Mars and Blue Mars, I have never gotten around to reading them. So when I determined to actually do that thing, I felt that first I had to re-read Red Mars, and this review is the result.

My first surprise was finding that Red Mars is set in that distant year of futurity, 2026. Reading an iconic piece of science fiction in the year that the book is set in was a bit dislocating for me, but I soon got over it. Such is the strength of KSR's vision that I soon found myself absorbed in his narrative. In any case, there are very few signs that we are not in the same show more future; there is no Internet, and the geopolitics are quaintly old-fashioned, but these are background details anyway and I only realised how things were back on the Earth of Red Mars slowly. In any case, Earth isn’t what the book is about.

We are travelling with, not the first expedition to Mars, but the first group of colonists – the “First Hundred”. We are introduced to them whilst they are in training in Antarctica; then we accompany them on the voyage out, and it is here we begin to meet some of the characters. (We have already been introduced to some of them in a flash-forward at the outset of the novel, though.) After landing, the colonists start work to make Mars habitable, and we quickly see divisions and differing opinions developing. Whilst most colonists are just concerned to do the things necessary to establish their bases and habitats, some amongst them take longer-term views. One group wants to start work immediately on terraforming Mars – transforming it through applied technology so that future generations can live on the surface without breathing masks or pressure garments. Another group, the “reds”, want to preserve Mars as they found it, as a stark, hostile yet beautiful wilderness. (“Red” here does not map directly onto our present-day political models.)

Other political disagreements arise, followed by divisions. Time passes. After five years, though, other colonists start to arrive. Whilst the First Hundred were government-sponsored, the new arrivals are backed by Earth's corporations; and they keep coming, bringing with them more and newer equipment, and starting infrastructure projects that go further into making Mars a habitable world, as well as commencing mining operations. Slowly, we realise that Mars is changing, and not necessarily for the better.

This is not an action-adventure story. Although it isn’t necessary to understand the science, the reader has to accept that the characters we are presented with are either scientists or engineers, and their sole reason for being in the story is to bring their expertise to Mars. Two of the principal characters – one of whom was the first man to set foot on Mars – spend much of the time doing politics, in the sense that they travel around talking to people and trying to influence decisions about the development of the colony, both on the ground and in remote communication with the UN oversight agency back on Earth; but all the time, the story revolves around sciencey people doing science. This is how it would be. And although KSR makes the process fairly painless for the reader, he assumes that someone picking up this book is going to be sufficiently interested in Mars and planetary exploration generally to bring a certain amount of their own knowledge to the table; but it is not necessary to have a Ph.D in biochemistry to follow and enjoy the story.

Ultimately, the reader will begin to see Mars as another character in the story. The landforms are described with love, and given that this was written before we had access to the wealth of photographs of the surface sent back by more recent robot probes, the descriptions are vivid and all the more remarkable.

Some minor packaging criticisms: my UK first edition hardback has some attractive cover art by Mel Grant, which depicts a sort of Chesley Bonestell Mars, with steep, jagged mountains and chasms, conical volcanos and a moon that is a discernable globe. The real Mars has none of these things; in particular, Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are (we think) captured asteroids with irregular shapes; only roughly round, but distinctly knobbly and in competitively low orbits. And there is a map provided which, like so many others in both fiction and non-fiction, does not include a lot of places named in the text (you would be surprised how often this happens!), and does not show many of the major landforms clearly. On the plus side, at the end of the book is a short chronology which helps the reader keep track of where we are, and how much time has passed.

Time is important in this book. KSR has said that he shortened the terraforming process by a factor of two to move the story along; and even then, he had to introduce a slightly hand-wavy piece of longevity treatment to extend the lifespans of his characters so that we have some degree of continuity in the story. But he treats some of the issues that this creates in a realistic way, and his characters amongst the First Hundred who make it through to the end of the book aren’t just the same people with silver hair; they know that they are older, that that age puts them at odds with many of the newer colonists, and that their experience may not fully compensate for the changing events they are faced with.

Kim Stanley Robinson became heavily involved with the "Mars Underground" as a result of this book. It can certainly be looked at as a realistic picture of what would be necessary to settle and live on Mars. Some entrepreneurs claim to have read this as an inspiration for their own ambitions; I suspect that they are relying on vague memories of the book, because the scale of economic involvement shown in Red Mars would be beyond any one individual or company to finance and reliably keep supplied. The First Hundred arrive to find multiple equipment caches sent over preceding years with heavy plant, power sources and atmospheric processing plants all ready to unpack and roll into action. We quickly see from the account of the spread of the First Hundred into multiple habitats across the surface of the planet that sending only one ship and limited equipment just would not cut it in reality. (And this was before the prospects offered by 3-D printing were ever thought of.)

As a piece of world-building, Red Mars is breath-taking. It stands up as a piece of descriptive literature and deserves to be held up as an example of the best that science fiction can be. show less

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. 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 show more 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. show less

I really enjoyed Red Mars. I loved that it was more about the people than about the science, although the science was certainly there underpinning the story. I loved that the people were neither good nor bad, they weren't supermen and superwomen, they were ordinary people with good and bad points, and even when they did things wrong (Frank, I'm looking at you) you can understand their motivations, and recognize them as human.

This story makes you believe that it could really happen, and people being what we are, this is how it would actually go.

"... 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 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 show more "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. show less

This is a hard book to review. Its probably also a hard book to recommend, and can certainly be hard to read at times. A local science fiction book club is reading this right now (in fact, we're meeting later this day to discuss it), and I know many members have been struggling with it. The beginning of the book is very dry, with much of the focus on the environment and science of Mars, with large aspects devoted to construction techniques, geographical descriptions, politics, and interpersonal dramas. The plot reveals itself at a glacial pace, and its really not a plot at all. Its more like a legend, a saga; we're living almost the whole lives of some of these characters and witnessing the transformation of a whole planet. If you have show more patience, this book is sooo rewarding. There are some truly amazing scenes here, especially in the second half of the book. I have a soft spot for Arkady and love his philosophizing and haranguing of the first 100. As leftist fiction, its an interesting experiment as well. When this was written in 1992/93, the global landscape looked very different. In fact, much of this, in a similar vein as the Green Earth trilogy, is aspirational. For me, it is like a time capsule. A vision of what the future could have been if we still believed in education, science, and progress. With a statement like that, you would think that there wasn't much political turmoil or even violence in this book, and that is quite wrong. Its just that KSR didn't predict the same kind of political turmoil. Mars represents a new start, a way to shed the systems and mindsets that are almost fixed in place on Earth, and shape a different system on a different world, right from the start. But its not easy, there is revolution, there is destruction, there is death, and with all of that the crushing weight of ennui and meaninglessness that can accompany those things. In many ways, the message is similar to that of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower; change is the only constant. Trying to hold onto the past will only bring suffering. At least, that's what I took from it. And its ironic too, because now the characters are living much longer lives, so they are able to witness huge, cataclysmic changes that once they thought only future generations would see. Because it was written in 1992, many parts of this feel dated. It is a very white-person focused book. We have one Asian woman that is explicitly mentioned, and of course she exhibits almost mystical characteristics. There are very few other people of color throughout the whole thing. Instead of a joint effort between the USA/Russia, if this were written within the last 15 years, it would likely have been a joint effort between the US/China/Japan/India. So, be aware of the biases that existed when this book was written. But I still love it. Much of it is a love letter to Mars itself, but its also a vision of a future where a whole new society can be created, a new economic system, and new social system...Its full of big ideas, and those to me, are this book's biggest strengths. show less

Although some of the science and math went whizzing by my head, exactly like the asteroids flying by Mars, Red Mars fascinated me on several levels and kept me reading to the end despite its ploddish patches.

One hundred scientists are sent to Mars to see if it can be turned into a viable place to live. Earth is a mess: overpopulated, run by multinational corporations rather than countries, with only lip service being paid to the United Nations and international law. Its food sources are severely compromised, as are its waters and its air.

Robinson takes us through the initial efforts to colonise the place, as seen through the eyes of key players in the “one hundred”. He starts with the murder of one of the key characters and then show more jumps to the past to work forward to that moment and onward from there. As I got to know this character more, I felt sad about this but also began to read him as a kind of archetype, knowing that he wouldn’t be lingering past a certain point. What that point was and how it all got there is the substance of this first book in the Mars trilogy.

I couldn’t shake the feeling as I read further and further into the story that this was a quietly important book, prophetic and prescient. It did win the Nebula Award but that only reaches a specific audience; I wish it had a wider reach, particularly as I see a lot of what he foresaw as happening on Earth now taking place. I disagree with those reviewers who found it “mind numbingly boring” or “wooden”. I agree that he does go on about rocks too much and that this could have been edited better but it does convey Robinson’s passion for the planet and his deep interest in its possibilities. I got good at skimming the rocks and formulae, almost Martian myself in my ability to go over those rough surfaces.

On to Green Mars, with pleasure. show less