Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson

May 2003 · Mars Trilogy Book 1 · Sold by Spectra

About this ebook

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel • Discover the novel that launched one of science fiction’s most beloved, acclaimed, and awarded trilogies: Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterly near-future chronicle of interplanetary colonization.
 
“A staggering book . . . the best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written.”—Arthur C. Clarke

For centuries, the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet has beckoned to humankind. Now a group of one hundred colonists begins a mission whose ultimate goal is to transform Mars into a more Earthlike planet. They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light onto its surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels drilled into the mantle will create stupendous vents of hot gases. But despite these ambitious goals, there are some who would fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Ratings and reviews

A wonderful read. Definitely not a light read. It's long rather long and a fairly difficult. It features science, politics, religious debate, romance, sex (tasteful). The author does a simply fantastic job of making you really despise a character, then that character saves the day. It's less about redemption and more about not judging. Also it's part of a trilogy. All three books are excellent and are very believable (mostly) accounts of how Mars may be colonized and how a relatively utopian society may possibly be formed. One negative is, even if you really, really like this trilogy, I'd avoid the "spin offs" made by the same author. They are not to the same standards and don't really continue the story.

As with Andy Weir's "The Martian", Red Mars grabs you by its realistic plausibility. Robinson thought through not only the technical aspects of settling another planet, but also the immense pressure of outside economic and political forces, all while wrapped in realistic and gritty characters. This is my second read... didn't mind buying the ebook even though I have the hardcopy trilogy on my bookshelf! Enjoy.

Robinson's writing is at once engaging and persistently challenging, as one reads page after page awaiting his next plot twist and scientific creativity. Expect to think and to consider his many political, technological, economic, and social ideas, woven together to create space opera at its best. Truly a contemporary tip of the hat to the Golden Age of Science Fiction's greatest series, Robinson grounds his science fiction in plausible science and its rational extension into an alien world. Most enjoyable!

About the author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Galileo’s Dream. In 2008 he was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment.” He serves on the board of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.