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Red Mars |  | Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Spectra
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  405 reviews
Sales Rank: 2582
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B000QCS914
Publication Date: May 27, 2003
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Amazon.com Review
The first novel in the astounding trilogy, Red Mars chronicles the lives of the first arrivals to Mars. The planet that the settlers find is empty of life and many of the pioneers want to begin changing the ecosystem right away to be suitable for human life. But the purity of the stark landscape convinces some scientists that it should be preserved. The stakes are high and the players on both sides range from politically naive idealists to ambitious manipulators without discernible scruples. No one can be sure that "terraforming" the planet will succeed, but it is certain to change the face of Mars beyond recognition. Red Mars won the 1994 Nebula Award.
Product Description
In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of three novels that will chronicle the colonization of Mars.
For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.
John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.
The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.
Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. Red Mars shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.
From the Paperback edition.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 405
 Possibly good in its time, but not lasting August 28, 2010
abulaafia (Taipei, Taiwan)
The wisdom offered to politicians and sociologists, and to us all, in this long-winded account of colonization is stultifyingly flat and commonplace. Every subject in this book is dealt with much more entertainingly and better written in a myriad of other books, including sci-fi.
Maybe it is our recently painfully increased acquaintance with Arab culture that makes this aspect of Red Mars so contrite and simplistic in retrospect, but all the other themes are also over-explored in a dull and patronizing fashion that cannot appeal to but the hardiest of Mars lovers. For all its many characters, described in the blurb as 'varied and engaging' there is but one type of human in the whole book, a sort of idealized American character taken from its own history, combined with socialist, communist, anarchist stereotypes with have nothing in common at all with real people.
Finally, the science in the book (it is science fiction after all) is often wrong, basic, badly described and boring. There is nothing to this aspect that has even remotely anything to do with actual colonization technologies. At best, it is unimaginative and dull.
The book is a political soap opera of the most basic kind, in the bad disguise of a hard-core SF book.
 A bit over-rated considering all the hype July 8, 2010
Richard Green (Seattle)
Red Mars was mildly compelling if not exactly riveting. I honestly expected more after all the awards and recommendations by friends. Considering its minimal character development and dry, documentary style, I expected more detailed and descriptive world-building. While some claim this is a science-heavy tome, I found the descriptions of the tech fairly slim. Another thing that struck me is how such a devastated earth had an endless supply of both resolve and money for the Mars colonizers. On top of that, all of that tech seemed to work flawlessly for the most part, which is very hard to swallow. Also, not sure why it bugged me, but the speed at which the early colonists could move around the planet seemed quite improbable. There was also a fairly ginormous coincidence where a notable character they were searching for was found, seemingly at random, from among tens of thousands of colonists.
Upshot is, I felt obligated to finish it, and might even read the next couple in series, but it felt like more of a task at times than a pleasure, though I admit I was hooked in just enough to keep going.
 An important hard SF novel on the settling of Mars June 21, 2010
A. Whitehead (Colchester, Essex United Kingdom)
Kim Stanley Robinson's epic Mars Trilogy chronicles humanity's colonisation of Mars, beginning in the early 21st Century and extending over a period of some two centuries. The first book, which covers a period of some forty years, sees the initial settling of Mars by the First Hundred, the welcome arrival of additional waves of colonists intent on scientific research and then the more challenging problems of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, refugees and outcasts on a world that is not ready for them, and the resulting tensions between the newcomers and old-timers, and between the authorities on Mars and Earth.
The success of the trilogy as a whole is debatable, but this first volume, at least, is a masterpiece. Robinson's story rotates through a number of POV characters amongst the initial settlers, the First Hundred, and it rapidly becomes clear that most of them are somewhat unreliable narrators. Maya's complaints in her own POV of her 'important problems' being ignored by the base psychiatrist are given another perspective in her friend Nadia's POV, which reveals Maya is more interested in a trivial love triangle between herself and two Americans rather than in the colonisation of Mars, whilst the psychiatrist Michel's POV reveals that he is giving Maya colossal amounts of time and attention (to the detriment of his own mental health) which is unappreciated. Character is thus built up in layers, from both internal viewpoints and external sources, making these central characters very well-realised (although characters outside the central coterie can be a little on the thin side).
However, it is Mars itself which is the central figure of the book. Robinson brings a dead planet to vivid life, emphasising the differences in terrain and character between the frozen northern polar icecap and the water-cut channels in the depths of the Valles Marineris, with the massive mountains of Tharsis towering high into the atmosphere and colonists eagerly staking claims to future beachfront properties in Hellas, the lowest point on Mars and the first place to see the benefits of terraforming. The ideas of Mars as it is now as a pristine, beautiful but harsh landscape and the habitable world it could be are sharply contrasted, and the rights and wrongs of terraforming form a core argument of the novel. I get the impression that Robinson sides with the view that the planet should be left untouched, but he is realistic enough to know this will not happen if Mars can be settled and exploited. Mars in this work becomes a success of SF worldbuilding to compete with Helliconia and Arrakis, losing only a few points for actually existing.
On the downside, Robinson hits a few bad notes. Some of these are unavoidable consequences of the book being nearly twenty years old. Even in 1992 the notion that the Chinese would not play a major role in the financing and undertaking of a Mars colonisation mission only forty years hence was somewhat fanciful, but today it is almost unthinkable. More notably, the global recession has made the possibility of a manned mission to Mars, let alone a full-scale colonisation effort, by the 2020s somewhat dubious. Of course, these are issues Robinson could not hope to predict in the early 1990s.
Other problems are more notable. Robinson goes to some lengths to make the pro-terraforming and anti-terraforming sides of the debate both understandable and intelligent, but his political sympathies are much more one-sided. The pro-Martian independence brigade have charismatic leaders and a grass-roots movement of plucky, honest-men-against-the-machine supporters to their name, whilst the pro-Earth-control movement is led by a fundamentalist conservative Christian and resorts to weapons and mass-slaughter extremely easily. Robinson, to his credit, recognises this problem in later books and tries to repair the damage somewhat (Phyllis, presented extremely negatively in Red Mars, is shown in a more sympathetic light in later volumes), but there remains a feeling of political bias in this first volume. In addition, it sometimes feels that Robinson really wants the reader to know about the years of research he put into the book, with tangents and divergences which make the book feel like half a novel and half a factual science volume on how the possible colonisation of Mars might happen. For those fascinated by the real-life plans to terraform Mars (like me) this isn't an issue, but for some it may be. It is also, by far, the biggest problem the sequels face.
Nevertheless, the sheer, massive scope and complexity of Red Mars makes up for this. There is an overwhelming feeling running through this novel unlike almost any other hard SF novel ever published, that this might actually happen. Maybe not as soon as 2027, maybe not with such a determined push towards colonisation and terraforming right from the off, but one day, barring the collapse of our civilisation, we will go to Mars, and many of the challenges and problems faced by the First Hundred in this book are issues that will need to be overcome to make that possibility a reality.
Plus, and this cannot be undervalued, the dry and more sedentary tone of the earlier parts of the book are made up for by the final 100 pages or so, which contains one sequence which ranks amongst the most memorable and stunning moments of SF imagery achieved in the history of the genre to date. Robinson may have the image of being a bit of a laidback Californian optimist, but he sets to blowing stuff up at the end of the book with a relish that makes even Greg Bear look unambitious.
Red Mars (****½) is an awe-inspiring feat of SF worldbuilding and a vital novel on the colonisation of our neighbouring world, let down by a few moments of naivete and simplistic straw-manning of political points of view not to Robinson's liking. Overcoming this, the central characters are fascinating, the sheer scope of the book is stunning and the climatic revolution sequence is dramatic and spectacular.
Required Reading! June 10, 2010
R. Kavanaugh (Spring Branch, TX)
Should be read by all policy makers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, and futurists. To read this book is to understand why Arthur C. Clarke made the recommendation he did.
The best Mars Colonizing/Terra Forming SCI FI ever May 18, 2010
Thomas Erickson (Lutz Fl and Felt Oklahoma)
I read this book years ago and forgot a lot of it but wrote down I liked the book. Years later I bought it and read it again.
Arther C Clarke the late brilliant futurist visionary and Sci Fi genius wrote Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is the best Sci Fi book written on Mars colonization. He should know read his Garden of Mars on Mars Terra Forming.
Kim Stanley Robinson is fantastic with character development, character talking and interaction. We see the gigantic ship Ares going to Mars with the first hundred colonists and experiencing a potential deadly solar flare/radiation. Later we see the landing and also part of the crew transforming the moon Phobos into a Mars shuttle/spaceport. Later we see the colonists teaming up and having romantic/sexual relations. Later large buildings,roads and all the infrastructure are put in as well as exploring the different areas of Mars. Later against some of the colonists wishes Terran Forming starts and picks up speed. Then there is a revolution against Earth control...thousands killed on Mars. Phobos crashes into Mars. The "elevator" to asteroid Clarke crashes back into Mars (kind of far fetched for me.) First man on Mars assassinated. DNA repair treatment started on Mars. Man may live to a thousand years.... maybe. Nuclear reactors sabotaged and melt downs causing gigantic floods from underground aquifers. Atmosphere getting denser and warmer...slightly. Incredible action and fast paced. A fantastic brilliant book.
Only part that slowed down the book and for me detracted from the book was the small part when Kim Robinson gets carried away explaining a Mars shrink theory and plans of social interaction. I wasn't interest in the diagrams or the logic of it. To me it temporarily slowed down the book, but after getting through this the book was great again. The "elevator" from Mars to asteroid Clarke was too improbable to me.
I give Red Mars a 4 1/2 stars rating because of the Mars shrink slow down and the too improbable "elevator" to asteroid Clarke but will post a 5 star as the rest of the book was spectacular. I liked the book so much I bought Green Mars and Blue Mars in the same trilogy. Kim Stanley Robinson sure can write. Great Book. If you are interested in Mars colonization and Mars Terra Forming this IS the ultimate classic book for you.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 405
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