Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Series
Feb 23 '00
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is one of the best science fiction series I have ever read. It is the stunning account of the colonization of Mars.
BRIEF PLOT SUMMARY
Red Mars... A hundred people, carefully selected, are sent to Mars to establish a research station and colony. This is the story of their flight, their landing, and the first years on the surface of Mars. Personal perspectives, conflicts and debates set the stage for the next two hundred years of human colonization developed in the following books.
Green Mars... Green Mars follows the story of the terraforming of Mars, from the perspective of a few of the original characters, and from the perspective of some of their children. It deals with the impact of new arrivals who come to supply temporary labor and then return to Earth, with the industries who want to profit from Mars and may or may not have her best interests at heart. Lastly, it deals with the growing pains of a new planet that is edging towards political independence.
Blue Mars... Blue Mars has the largest scope of the three novels. It deals with the political, industrial, economic and social development of Mars and the progress of the terraforming efforts. Robinson also explores a new eco-friendly economic system. It also follows the story of some of the original characters, their children, and their grandchildren.
COMMENTS
* Multiple points of view.
Robinson enters the minds of multiple characters over the course of the series. Each character is a unique, three dimensional human being with his or her own distinct voice -- especially the original characters from Red Mars.
In effect, we get as many picture of Mars as there are points of view, an amazing feat of fiction writing.
* Complex issues.
In Red Mars, the characters raise issues about the future of Mars, and what their role is in shaping that future. The outcome of these debates changes the course of events for centuries to come. To some extent, some of the characters come to symbolize a particular point of view.
Here are some of the issues raised:
- The environmental debate. Kim Stanley Robinson poses an interesting question. On Earth, the environmental movement tries to preserve "natural life." On Mars, the concepts of "natural" and "life" are separate. There IS no natural life: only unliving natural rock and unnatural, Earth life. Which, then, is more valuable: The naturalness of the billion year old geology and stone? Or the life that humans can bring to and establish on Mars?
This debate, and the environmental story that unfolds on Mars, can be read as a metaphor for what happened, and is still happening, to the American West.
- The Mars society debate. This is another issue at the core of the Mars series. What will the human society on Mars look like? Will it be a unique opportunity to become something entirely new, to leave behind petty, Earthly differences and forge a new world? Or will people bring their baggage with them?
* Scope of the book.
The series starts relatively small, in Red Mars, with only a hundred people. We know only a dozen or so by name, and we share the points of view of only a subset of these.
At the beginning, these characters are sufficient to give us a good idea of what is happening on Mars. They represent only themselves.
As the series progresses, more people immigrate to Mars and establish new colonies. At this point, the scope of Mars-events goes beyond the view of the "first hundred," and a new chapter of Mars history begins. For the reader, as for the "first hundred," there is an increasing loss of control as the population of Mars increases.
As the population grows, the initial people seem to grow smaller. They still have a lot of influence, but their ability to change events grows weaker and weaker as more people need to be "moved" for a change to occur. This, also, occured in the American West. As a new place becomes more populated, there is less and less room for single-human exploits to change the direction of history.
In the later books, Kim Stanley Robinson no longer encompasses the action, he can only sample it here and there. Far too much is going on for the reader, or for any one character, to be aware of it all.
For this reason, I like the more manageable "Red Mars" the best out of the trilogy. It is is tightly written and does not try to cover too much. The later novels can seem so broad that the reader gets lost in planetary or interplanetary politics, new economic theory, and third and fourth generation Martians.
CONCLUSION
On the whole, I loved this series and have read all three books twice. The characters are still with me even years later, they were written so powerfully. And I am still grappling with the many issues raised by Robinson.
For more analysis of the Red Mars series, I have written a separate epinion about Red Mars.
A CLOSE SECOND BEST SERIES
I love Orson Scott Card's Ender series, and the first book, "Ender's Game," is one of the best science fiction books I have ever read. I also liked the second book, "Speaker for the Dead," though it is a very different kind of novel from "Ender's Game" (for one, it takes place 3,000 years later and is only loosely connected with the original). I did not, however, like the third book, "Xenocide," that much, and have not even read the fourth book, "Children of the Mind." I did enjoy Card's return to the original world of "Ender's Game" with "Ender's Shadow."
So, though Card's series contains individual books I enjoyed very much, the series as a whole is not as good as the Mars series.
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Epinions.com ID:
jaseroque
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Location: California
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