Red Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Mass Market Paperback, 592 pages

English language

Published Sept. 30, 1993 by Spectra.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-56073-2
OCLC Number:: 1267657058

In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research & cutting-edge science in the 1st of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars:

For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. For centuries, Mars has beckoned humans to conquer its hostile climate. Now, in 2026, a group of 100 colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research & cutting-edge science in the 1st of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars:

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers & Arkady Bogdanov lead a terraforming mission. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage & madness. For others it offers an opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. For the genetic alchemists, it presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life & death. The colonists orbit giant satellite mirrors to reflect light to the surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth. Massive tunnels, kilometers deep, will be drilled into the mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves & friendships will form & 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 & ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in evolution, creating a world in its entirety. It shows a future, with both glory & tarnish, that awes with complexity & inspires with vision.

13 editions

sotolf reviewed Red Mars (Mars Trilogy) by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars (1))

Enjoyable book following mostly the bad characters

4 stars

I did enjoy large swathes of this book, at times it did feel like everything was a bit too long though, It also was kind of annoying to me that we mostly follow the people I like the least in the book frank, john, and maya. It was fun and I probably will continue on to the next one, just need a little breather first. Hopefully that will have some better characters that I can spend time with, more like Nadia and Michel which were way better, but sadly a really small part of the story.

It felt like mostly this story was about making communism sound palatable to americans all in all, which is a bit much for me. It does also seem pretty huge on stereotyping every nation that isn't american down to a couple of things which is kind of standard fare, but kind of annoying.