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Red Mars (Mars Trilogy) [Paperback]

Kim Stanley Robinson (Author)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Publication Date: 18 Oct 1999 | Series: Mars Trilogy

The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson’s massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. ‘The ultimate in future history’ Daily Mail

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.

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The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson’s massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. ‘The ultimate in future history’ Daily Mail

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

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Product details

Paperback: 670 pages
Publisher: Voyager; (Reissue) edition (18 Oct 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0586213899
ISBN-13: 978-0586213896
Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 17.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 276,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

‘Red Mars is the ultimate in future history’
Daily Mail

‘One of the finest works of American sf’
Times Literary Supplement

‘Absorbing, impressive, fascinating… Utterly plausible’
Financial Times

‘Red Mars may simply be the best novel ever written about Mars’
Interzone

‘A staggering book. The best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written.’
Arthur C Clarke

From the Back Cover

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.

See all Product Description

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Customer Reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars

3.9 out of 5 stars

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book(s) EVER... end of. 20 Dec 2005

By Digital Fist

Format:Paperback

"Red Mars" in particular, and the remainder of the trilogy as a whole are quite simply the best novels I have ever read. Ever. And I have read quite a few, s/f or otherwise. I recommend this to everybody, whether they like science-fiction or not.

It starts out, as an epic soap-opera - for want of a better description - about a group of 100 carefully chosen scientists, sent on their way to establish the first permanent colony on another planet, and all their curious personal interactions. Halfway there, they decide - as one might expect to happen - if they are to start a completely new civilisation, why should they be controlled from another planet, and do everything in accordance with NASA protocol. There begins the rebellion, which - a couple of tens of thousands of new colonists later - develops into a guerilla war for the control and sovereignty of our second home.

Kim Stanley Robinson likes to set up interesting little philosophical arguments between the main characters (as in "The Years of Rice & Salt", also an excellent book), and thus we see the continual disagreement between those who believe we have a duty as intelligent space-faring beings to spread life wherever there is none, and those who believe there is intrinsic value in a barren but untouched landscape, and that it should be left well alone.

All the characters are very well thought-out and developed (Sax being my favourite), and with a few notably exceptions, all of the technology the author proposes is very "near-future".

I have no idea what was going through the minds of the people who gave this book "1 Star". They should probably tackle something less challenging first, like one of Enid Blyton's epics. This book is unashamedly big and long, but it is so, because it covers an important and epic story....

Some day we will do this for real, assuming we haven't already killed ourselves off - which is a distinct possibility.

Read it, and take it for what it is: an incredibly well-constructed epic story about the human condition, transplanted to another planet. I find this book truly inspiring, and it is one of the only few I re-read at least once every two years.

The second book is about 85% as good as the first one, and strongly recommended also. The third one mainly really ties up loose ends, and is definitely worth a read if you liked the other two, but is certainly nowhere near as groundbreaking.

READ IT. READ IT. READ IT. (Then read the other two). Read more ›

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Magnificent Epic 15 Aug 2002

By Mr. Russell Newton

Format:Paperback

The first volume of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is absolutely magnificent. This is a book for non-SciFi readers, as well as SciFi fans: the subject matter is wide-ranging and the book kept my interest throughout.

In some ways it struck me as a 21st Century version of what it must have been like for the early colonisers in the United States.

The book is beautifully written, a pleasure to read, and manages to get inside the heads of the main characters without falling into the Dickensian trap of too much description and not enough action.

I read it cover to cover in under a week and had to buy the second book the day I finished the first one.

I would put this in my list of all-time best reads, and for me that is saying something!

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the classics 24 Aug 2002

By ANDREW DAY

Format:Paperback

This is one of the classics of modern SF. Strangely, though, there's very little literal science fiction in there. Apart from one gimmick later on, almost all of the science in this book we could do today. And therefore the story ends up being much more about the people and the politics. When I put it down, I was struck by two thoughts. Firstly that it's very easy to forget that Robinson has never actually been to Mars to research it, since the detail is so great. And second, that when we colonise Mars, this is exactly how we'll mess it up.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An important hard SF novel on the settling of Mars 21 Jun 2010

By A. Whitehead TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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 (****�) 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. Read more ›

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars simply brilliant 31 May 2003

By M. Mccreath

Format:Paperback

This is one of the best and most realistic sci-fi stories ever written, from the technical data on terraforming mars to animal evolution. This book has it all, from the first man to step foot on the red planet, to life, death, murder, revolution. The humanity of this book is simply astounding. The end of this book will have you buying Green Mars and then Blue Mars. Simply put this book is an Epic, a must read for any sci-fi lover.

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› See all 62 customer reviews (newest first) on Amazon.co.uk

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Conversion to Kindle of an Awesome Novel Series

Having had this series of books in paperback for some years I was delighted to see that they have (eventually!) been release on Kindle. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Traffic

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best hard sci-fi novel ever

I find it incredible that any serious reader of fiction( of any genre) could give this magnificent opus any less than 5 stars. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Zane Zorro

4.0 out of 5 stars A monument of real SF?

Red Mars is the first of a series of 3 books (..green and blue Mars). All of these totalize around 2500/3000 pages of real science fiction if I could say. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Eric le rouge

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful

I set out to read this book mostly at random. At first, given the name, I thought I'd find a cold war - based book about communism and western capitalism clashing on Mars, and... Read more

Published 6 months ago by rebuilder

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing

The concept of discovering Mars early in the book is interesting. However the rest of the book is all about bringing in Earth's problems: conflicts, people arguing - I just... Read more

Published 8 months ago by mako

2.0 out of 5 stars Nighttime Soap

This is Eastenders in space. Not enough science and too much about relationships. If you want a good science fiction book or a book from a science perspective on going to Mars,... Read more

Published 9 months ago by Ron

3.0 out of 5 stars Would have been better without the plot

I'm some kind of fan of 'hard sci-fi' and this is, pretty much, hard sci-fi and deserves credit for being a pretty realisitic treatement of the colonisation of Mars. Read more

Published 12 months ago by doctor_jeep

4.0 out of 5 stars Red Mars

Red Mars is divided into 8 parts, each lived through a different primary character. We vicariously experience the colonization and expansion of Mars through Frank, Maya, Nadia, and... Read more

Published 15 months ago by CallumP

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Mars Novel of the 20th Century

Authors occasionally surprise you. More rarely they creep up behind you and hit you over the head with a work so impressive that a coma is sure to follow. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Rod Williams

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor!

I am a fan of sci-fi but must agree with the others who rate this novel badly. The characters are wooden, lifeless and create no attachment or emotion in the reader. Read more

Published 21 months ago by D Lambert

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