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    Red Mars
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    Red Mars
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    Red Mars
    Ebook747 pages14 hours

    Red Mars

    By Kim Stanley Robinson

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Another timeless masterpiece in the Voyager Classics series

    Mars – the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind’s dreams of space conquest.

    From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists – hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert – Red Mars is the story of a new genesis. It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising and violence is brewing… for civilization can be very uncivilized.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateApr 11, 2013
    ISBN9780007401703
    Author

    Kim Stanley Robinson

    Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952. After travelling and working around the world, he settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched scientific basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and highly praised ‘Mars’ series.

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    Reviews for Red Mars

    4/5

    2,165 ratings86 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It started well, becomes pretty tedious at times, but finished with a flourish. There were a lot pages spent on the relationships, especially the romantic aspects, that contributed to the tedium.

      This is really a story about how capitalism will devour anything it gets its hands on, regardless of the cost.
    • 3/5
      Well written, but I wasn't interested in the story.
    • 3/5
      This book reads more like a jumble of things that happen over 40 years or so than a book plot, which I suppose is intended to read more like history, but it gets a little dull at times. I think I might have liked it better if it had be 3 or so books with more traditional rising and falling narrative arcs, but then again it might have been a lot more tiresome that all the characters were kind of awful and hyper-focused on their own narrow interests.
    • 4/5
      One of the best of a crop of Mars exploration novels from the early 90s.
    • 4/5
      Red Mars was not what I expected. I thought it would be more of a space opera but it was too steeped in science to that alone. In that respect, it reminds me of The Martian. The science stuff was my favorite part of this story. I also liked how the author portrayed the different factions that formed on Mars. I think this is a realistic view of the future of Mars if the human race every colonized it.The thing I didn't like is that in some places the plot moved too slow. I think the author got side tracked sometimes describing how something worked. Still, I recommend this book to all lovers of Sci-Fi.
    • 3/5
      Red Mars is the Moby Dick of interplanetary SF novels. Just as Melville's classic tells you everything there is to know about whales and the industry of whaling, Red Mars does the same with Mars and its colonization.

      It took me over 3 and half months to digest this whale of a book. I liked the story, enjoyed the complex, driven characters, found the scientific and social extrapolation utterly convincing. But it was all such a darn chore to read.

      I sampled some of the other reviews on GoodReads to try to figure out why. Some of these reviews are even more tedious than the book itself (and that's saying a lot!)

      An ambitious and intelligent novel that is, to quote some critic, "much easier to admire than enjoy."
    • 5/5
      This should be Elon Musk's strategy guide to colonizing Mars. It's that detailed, science-based and fascinating. 
    • 4/5
      I may have skimmed a lot of the sections on Martian geology, but I was pleasantly surprised by much of this book and will read the rest of the trilogy, but not all at once.
    • 1/5
      I actually didn't even finish this it was so terrible. Really boring and lame.
    • 4/5
      A book chock full of hard science and a plot that is wonderfully complex. This is a great book and not the norm in todays market. A thinking man's book to say the least, and a must read for all SF fans who care what SF actually is about.
    • 4/5
      Red Mars is a novel describing the near-future colonization of Mars; however, though Mars serves as a unique and intriguing backdrop, the story is really about people and humanity in general. We first read about the travails of the "first hundred" colonists--a group of highly-trained and highly-motivated scientists and engineers--as they deal with many of the engineering challenges that living on Mars presents. The author is very well-versed in the scientific aspects of living on Mars, and is able to point out minutia that ends up having a huge effect on the colonists. Despite the realism that this provides, the human factor really comes though, as interpersonal relationships become immediately important as many of the colonists have very different visions of the future. The book then fast-forwards through subsequent waves of settlers, and we find that our protaganists have a smaller and smaller say what the future will look like. However, the continue to serve as windows on the world as the new inhabitants of Mars deal with the age-old issues of humanity, including conservation versus development (in this case terraforming), mercantilism and the rights of the few (people on Mars) versus the rights of the many (people on Earth), religious freedom (and what it means to be religious on another planet), and corporate interests versus national interests versus what people actually want. The book (of course) ends in military conflict, which just highlights how fragile life is in a Martian environment where people have to set up complex systems just to stay alive. I enjoyed this book, but it read more like a history than a story. On one hand, it's certainly not an edge-of-your-seat page-turner, but on the other, the presentation is both fascinating and real in a way that you never doubt that this is how it would actually play out.
    • 5/5
      I finished this last night in the car and I am still in awe. This book takes Mars from its formation in the solar system to our colonization and terraforming of the planet. The author takes great care to present things from diverse points of view, we see through the eyes of both a character for whom our very presence on Mars is destroying it and who wants nothing more than to be alone with the planet exactly as it is and a character whose ideas for terraforming Mars are too radical even for the UN.
    • 3/5

      Read it for the first time in 1993.

      Going into this book 20 years later, the feeling I had was one of trepidation. Would the book have stood the test of time?

      And the answer is: Unfortunately no.

      One of the things that I've noticed almost from the onset was a huge dissonance (I don't remember spotting it 20 years earlier, but now I did): Why plan the mission without firmly establishing at least some sort of general idea about what sort of terraforming might be done?

      I cannot imagine spending hundreds of billions of dollars to send Men to Mars without a proper plan in place. It was quite inconceivable more than 20 years ago, and it still is.

      Also at times I had the impression that there were things Robinson just didn't want to bother to develop. The name of Underhill" pops up out of nowhere in the middle of a paragraph inside a chapter with no explanation at all. You'd think the naming of the first settlement would be somewhat more momentous.

      It just doesn't seem like there was much of a story present at all.

      Great swaths of the book consist of characters wandering around being lonely and accomplishing nothing, though it hardly feels like there's much character development to speak of.

      hen they wait until after they arrive on Mars to have some big, nasty row about terraforming? Surely this would be an issue that would have been hammered out well in advance of anyone leaving orbit?

      What about the fact that the 1st 100 settlers waited until arriving on Mars to start bickering? How could the 1st 100 have been chosen so badly?

      The answer given is not convincing, ie, apparently everyone lied horribly during the recruitment phase because they wanted to get there... WTF??? What kind of behaviour assessments were given to this guys??

      What about Maya? What was the purpose of including her thread in the book? It serves no purpose, except as the love triangle Boone/Chalmers/Maya.

      The only redeeming fact about the book is the Science. For that 3 stars.

      "
    • 3/5
      I recently decided to broaden my reading horizons into the realm of science fiction, which I am not very well read in. It isn't that I particularly have any aversion to sci-fi, it's just that I am largely unfamiliar with the genre, and I always find myself unsure of where to begin. I did a bit of cursory research on a good sci-fi starting point, and this book came up. I have to say, it looked promising - highly acclaimed and well known, with a plot that sounded fascinating.A large group of qualified people are chosen to become the first colonists of Mars. The story follows their voyage through space, their first months on the red planet and how they adjust to life there, and the problems that inevitably arise as they continue to live and work there over the years.This book was nothing like what I expected it to be. The main focus of the plot was politics rather than colonization - endless, droning, tedious politics. If you think that it sounds difficult to make the lives of people on Mars boring, that was exactly my thinking as well. But as the book went on (and on), I soon realized that Robinson had found a way to make this marvelous storyline into just that.The writing was dry and unfeeling, and to be honest this book was a chore to get through. I’m surprised that I managed to make it all the way to the end, though I did take an unusually long time to finish it. At times, during brief descriptions of the landscape and sunsets of Mars, I felt a glimmer of interest. But these were usually over within a sentence or two, to return to politics.My other big problem with Red Mars was the characters - who were dreadful. They argue and quarrel over a great many things, all of them seeming to be matters that would have already been heavily planned for. Now that they are on Mars, carrying out the most expensive mission in history, the fate of such massively important decisions is to be left in the hands of two people whining and fighting? It seemed very suspicious.One of the characters to get the most attention was Maya, described as a virulent Russian beauty - made to seem a sort of femme fatale tigress. But I just couldn’t see it - sure, the author and the other characters can tell us that that’s who she is, but I didn’t feel like the actual character was written so strongly. She came across as more indecisive and ditzy to me. There was some sort of very drawn out and unconvincing love triangle that never drew me in, and the sex scenes seemed ridiculous (a man describes a woman’s breasts as “magnets to his eyes,” for example). At one point in the book, possibly in an attempt to explain to the reader why all of these characters were so whiny and awful, Robinson reveals that there was a personality test that they were all required to take before being accepted into the mission - but guess what? Every single one of them admits that they lied on it. In fact, they gleefully say that they answered every question the opposite of how they felt. And so, here they are, squabbling and pouting their way around Mars.I wanted so much to find an epic science fiction novel that brings to life another world and evolving culture. It’s out there - it’s just not this one.
    • 4/5
      Stanley Robinson has written a very interesting series of novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) that speculate about what would happen should Mars be colonized. I have completed only Red Mars so far, but if the others are as intriguing as the first they will be well worth reading. Truly the book is a political treatise as much as an action science fiction novel. As soon as the first ship lands and the colonists begin to build a base they are bifurcated into two factions: those who would preserve Mars in its pristine, primitive state, and those would want to begin the “” process that would try to recreate an earth-like environment. Both visions have a certain utopian quality to them. Earth has become overpopulated and hopes that Mars will solve some of its mineral scarcity problems. Soon the corporations have begun to dictate policy and by the end of the book a revolution is underway to cut the tie to earth and stop immigration of those looking for a way off the dying Earth. The original “ Hundred” become mythologized and after a treatment to prevent radiation illness turns out to virtually provide an unlimited life-span, they become revered (and feared — several are assassinated) for their supposed wisdom and insight. There is an underlying theme of the paradoxical utopian questions “ is to be done?” and “ have we accomplished?”

      The story is told from several points of view and I found that of Nadia Chernyshevsky (most illuminatingly there is a Russian dissident named Chernyshevsky who wrote a volume of utopian fiction from prison entitled What is to Be Done? in the 1860s) the most compelling. She gains enormous satisfaction from the buildings and creations of her problem-solving accomplishments, but she is also sympathetic to the goals of the revolutionaries after it becomes evident how the political and ecological situation has deteriorated. The bad guys are clearly the multinational corporations who create their own security forces to suppress dissent and owe allegiance only to the profit motive. Another appealing character is John Boone (get the allusion?) who wants to build a better social fabric on Mars based on the physical realities of Mars, inevitably a harsh world. He becomes a wandering Socratic proponent of a plan for the new society. His answer is often to create dialogue among the many parties and in the end — nope I won’t tell what happens to him — tries to build a culture.

      Robinson speculates throughout on what constitutes nature and speculates through the characters about whether we have an obligation or right to create or model the natural environment for our own purposes.
    • 2/5
      wooden. I got 2/3 of the way thru, skimmed the last 10 pages and decided to toss it. So much of it was based on lengthy talk of the local rocks. And when John Boone spent months traveling from communities, I wondered why such a hi tech place didn't have rapid transport yet. It might have some interesting economic theory, but the story didn't even carry it as well as Atlas Shrugged did Rand's. Marina talking with John & Vlad: "...it should be the law that people are rewarded in proportion to their contribution to the system...There's all kinds of phantom work! Unreal values assigned to most of the jobs on Earth! The entire transnational executive class...Advertising, stock brokerage..." (p 298-9) This sounds exactly like John's role, yet we're supposed to believe this druggie (oh, but it's a legal drug) is a valued person in this tale.
    • 4/5
      Red Mars is an impressive piece of work. I would give it 5 stars, but it is, indeed, a tad bit too long. The book is "about" the colonization of Mars by humans who certainly are waaay ahead of science and technology than we are in 2011. The technical aspect of the story is hefty, so those who cannot deal with long arguments about terraforming or bioengineering or mining minerals might hate this book with a passion. The other hefty part is politics. The first 100 scientists who start the colonization go through a selection process and soon it becomes clear that most people had to hide their political views (among other things) to be able to make it. So soon after they take off, political factions start forming. This becomes the main drive of the story, in a way. As the colonization expands from just the first 100 to more people, the powerful force of capitalistic investment is felt and this further strains the different beliefs and factions among the Martians.

      The story is told form the point of view of a select few, who are some of the most important characters among the first 100. These characters are well-developed with distinct world views. They also represent different philosophical ideas. In the end, the main issue is if Mars is another mine to be used and abused by a crumbling Earth, or is it, should it try to be, its own, independent entity? And if it is going to be a power of its own, how should it be formed? The economic, philosophical, and biological arguments throughout the book address this and many related mini-issues.

      Ultimately, there is a sadness about the way humans go somewhere and destroy it. We have done this to Earth and we will surely follow with something else, if only we could get ourselves to that place.

      The molecular biology aspect of the technical stuff was well done. I will say that as of 2011 we do not know a way to just cause "autokilling" in any type of organism by just engineering in two genes. This is done in the book, and it can be thought as a simplified version of what actually happens. But the whole point of the already existing death mechanisms in cells is to prevent overgrowth. Cancer is not the lack of these genes, necessarily; it is the by-pass of such mechanisms. So just engineering in a cell death mechanism does not, would not, prevent an organism from taking over the whole surface of Mars, for example.
    • 1/5

      This book is mind-numbingly boring. There's potential everywhere in the book, in the interplay between the characters, in the conservation vs terraforming, in the political wrangling, in the economics, in the national vs the big corps and in a myriad other conflict zones the author puts into his book. The exitement is drain out of them all by the prose and the miles and miles and miles of technical jargon, information dumps and repetition of previous technical jargon. The plot is also incoherent and the interplay between the characters is at best bland and at worst incomprehensible.

      Avoid unless you're on a quest to read all the hugo and nebula winners. *shiver*
    • 2/5
      I picked this up free for Kindle but didn't enjoy it. I'm not even sure if I bothered to finish reading it.
    • 3/5
      I like this book, far superior to Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. I think this was the landscape used in the "John Carter" film of recent years, and close to the National Geographic map I own. Good fun, and I read the rest of them.
    • 5/5
      This was probably the first 'hard' sci-fi book I ever read, almost 10 years ago now. It was bloody awesome then, and is even better now that I'm older and able to understand the politics and such better.

      This book opens up a very real and tangible universe, ours, and adds the colonization of Mars as a way of exploring human society and culture. Without spoilers, I can't say all that much more about how it does this, but suffice to say you'll learn about tech, about Mars, and even about us. There are love stories, tragedies, betrayal, and all the rest.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      The first book in a sprawling epic about the colonization of Mars. I found it highly enjoyable for the most part, but it does have it's flaws. Robinson has a tendency to kind of become infatuated with his characters and he keeps them around for a long while. They kind of live in their own heads, come into frequent conflicts with each other, and some of their character flaws become really drawn out. Some of the characters are really hard to like. If you can get past this, there is an excellent story about space exploration here. Also, Robinson is also clearly in love with Mars. If you are as well, you will really grok the series; but pages long descriptions of regolith and craters and canyons might become repetitive to some. I often found myself skipping paragraphs or even whole pages to get back to the metaplot. You can do that without really missing much, at times.For those with patience, and a fascination with the Fourth Planet, you will enjoy this novel of Martian colonization and terraforming.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      This trilogy is fascinating in concept, but its ideas are bogged down in the relationships between the characters, none of whom were memorable to me, so that the terraforming was almost incidental and became lost. Green Mars was more of the same and I never bothered with Blue Mars before selling these books.
    • 5/5
      The scope of this book is just staggering. There is a lot of hard science here, but the characters are also well drawn, distinct personalities; I love the blinking, owlish Sax, and also Hiroko, a Japanese Mars goddess. There is also a lot of sex here, and the resulting sexual politics between the first 100 scientists both en route and after they touch down. Tensions on Earth escalate dramatically with the invention of an anti-aging therapy, as the planet is already dangerously overcrowded at 10 billion. A revolution breaks out on Mars, and the space elevator is destroyed. This book feels very plausible, like future history. My admiration for the author's skill here is immense. One of my favorites.
    • 3/5
      A sometimes slow but gripping epic of the human colonization of Mars. Unless you can't somach long novels with lot of expostion, or radical leftish politics, you should check it out.
    • 5/5
      Although I wouldn't recommend this to someone unfamiliar to science fiction (I'd try to ease them in with Robinson's Pacific Edge or Wild Shore first), it's rare to come across works with this much ambition, and rarer still when they're matched up with an author talented enough to fulfill that ambition. Robinson's strength is definitely in his characterizations, which would be incredible in any genre, but simply blow most other sci-fi authors out of the water with their depth and breadth. At the risk of indulging in hyperbole, I can honestly say that I've never read a collection of characters that I cared more about outside of Tolstoy.
    • 4/5
      Prolix and often as dry as the dusty Martain surface, this is still a very good book. The series of which it is a part, chronicling the purposeful transformation of Mars into a watery world like Earth, is simply wonderful for its span and detail. I have re-read each book in the trilogy when a new oe appeared, and they do stand up to the attention.