Mass Market Paperback, 592 pages

English language

Published Sept. 30, 1993 by Spectra.

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

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (153 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.

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 …

12 editions

Great hard sci-fi that blends several genres

4 stars

Content warning Basic plot structure discussed.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 ;)

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.

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 …

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Subjects

  • Science Fiction - High Tech
  • Fiction - Science Fiction
  • Science Fiction
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