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 story that covers decades, told by an author that has an incredible working knowledge of Mars and the way it has evolved. I really enjoyed this book although it was not what I had originally expected it to be. The story is much more involved and the social conflicts seem frighteningly realistic. The technological, and biological advancements were interesting to read about and told in a very realistic way. I especially liked reading about the space elevator project.

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!

I enjoyed the realism of the science and technology but it was getting to feel like I was reading a realty TV show and you think something was going to happen but nothing did. Okay, John drive all day again, talked to some more colonists, he is back with his girlfriend this week, and he still doesn't like Frank. Unfortunately, I gave up on this book have way through and I didn't have anything to do (read it during Hurricane Florence). Maybe I'll finish it later.

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.