Red Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson, 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

(206 reviews)

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.

18 editions

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

real shit 💯

4 stars

i was surprised by how much i enjoyed this book. often with harder scifi i find myself rolling my eyes at the techno-optimism of the author. usually some version of technology can save humans from themselves if put it just the right hands. i see robinson using the theme of technological advancement as a way to talk about capitalism and how science is intertwined with state and corporate interests, how this necessarily determines the shape of technologies as such as new means of exploitation. the counterpoint is this profound potentiality of mars as a place, from the beginning characters discussing that they can shrug away the yoke of capitalist and national interests and disagreeing on the way to get there. there are questions posed as to the different forms that can be created in the context of autonomy. i appreciate robinsons attention to detail at times painting the landscape from …

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

Great hard sci-fi that blends several genres

4 stars

Content warning Basic plot structure discussed.

Re-reading this one for the first time. I loved it, it tickled so many of my fancies. Hard sci-fi/competence porn, then a detective story, then a political thriller, and then a high-stakes revolutionary insurrection. The science jargon and places can sometimes be hard to get through and keep track of, but as there's only a few "important" places in the story, I made it through.

All in all a great start to the trilogy. I immediately began the second book, and finishing that, moved onto the third directly after. Like the first two Hyperion books, I think you get a lot more out of the story if you just read them one after another.

Maxim reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

С одной стороны, твердая НФ, по-настоящему научная. С другой — левацкая агитка, приправленная беспорядочными связями. Лучше бы автор оставил свои политические и сексуальные предпочтения при себе.

Hope reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

i am sorry if you don't care for martian geology you are wrong

tivasyk reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

not what i expected: too little adventure, too much intrigue and politics.

Jolteon reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A really good book, but I feel like it could have been 50 pages shorter with no real lost content.

ManyRoads reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An excellent beginning to an imagined saga of Mars. The tale reminds me of a James Michener tale re-imagined for a not too distant future. The tale offers wonderful scope, depth, characters, plot, and science. I look forward to the next novel in the trilogy.

Mikael Svahnberg reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

First half was a solid five-star, then things just went south.

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'LibraryThing'

3 stars

If Robinson were better at writing characters, this could have been a book I'd really love. It has an engaging sweep of a plot, it makes Mars feel more real and reachable than anything else I've read, and all the politics & ecology running through it feel at least possible, mostly plausible. But the characters are so painfully thin! Each is either a pure vessel for an ideology (and at times their arguments made me feel like I was reading the lefty Ayn Rand), or a nation profession combo caricature. By far my favourite parts of the book are the long sections in which Mars itself is the main character, because in those this flaw recedes. And the worst parts are the interpersonal drama because I could so readily slip into dropping the names altogether and just reading it as "Japanese gardener talks to Russian engineer", and so on.

Overall I enjoyed the book enough to keep reading, but found it frustrating enough that I went and read the synopses of the other two in the trilogy because I can't see myself getting around to reading the actual books. The strengths of it left me wanting to hear speculative non-fiction from Robinson, but his weaknesses as a writer of fiction undermined this book pretty badly for me.

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'LibraryThing'

3 stars

TimmyMac reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A tremendous book, and exactly what I needed after The Martian. That book was realistic, but shallow, and silly. Red Mars was even more realistic, but full of depth, and philosophy, and beautiful prose. Can't wait to read the rest of the series.

Yashima reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I enjoyed this book very much. The characters, the sciency part (I would have to read up on some of this, how much of it is made up and how much of the martian landscape is derived from what is known), the story ... if you like Science Fiction this is really a must-read. I am now on to Green Mars.

PS: if you have read Spin or plan on reading it, you will recognize a certain Martian feature ;)

Shack70 reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I just finished reading Red Mars and was so disappointed. This book had so much potential going into it, but in short the characters suck. The main characters in Red Mars are all part of the first 100 people to colonize Mars. You don't get to meet all 100 of them (thank god), but out of the ones you do meet there is not one of them that is likeable. This lack of any characters to get attached to or even like a little makes reading Red Mars a painful experience. There are some good ideas about Mars, the technology to live there, and ways to terraform it all presented from characters that are just not enjoyable.

outofrange reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is an intricately imagined Mars colonization tale, fascinating in the detail of both scientific and political observations. Published in 1994, it's aged impressively well for a book set in the mid 21st century.

nicknicknicknick reviewed Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Mars Trilogy, #1)

Review of 'Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)' on Goodreads

4 stars

1) ''It seemed, however, to be a world without life. People searched for signs of past or present Martian life, anything from microbes to the doomed canal-builders, or even alien visitors. As you know, no evidence for any of these has ever been found. And so stories have naturally blossomed to fill the gap, just as in Lowell's time, or in Homer's, or in the caves or on the savannah---stories of microfossils wrecked by our bio-organisms, of ruins found in dust storms and then lost forever, of Big Man and all his adventures, of the elusive little red people, always glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. And all of these tales are told in an attempt to give Mars life, or to bring it to life. Because we are still those animals who survived the Ice Age, and looked up at the night sky in wonder, and told stories. And Mars has never ceased to be what it was to us from our very beginning---a great sign, a great symbol, a great power.
And so we came here. It had been a power; now it became a place.''

2) '''The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind,' he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. 'Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides. [...]
Now that we are here, it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we're on two, three if you count the Moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars's beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind: if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So---' he held up a palm, as if satisfied that the analysis had been supported by the data in the graph---as if he had examined the periodic table, and found that it still held true---'we might as well start.'''