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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
What are the politics of building a world? What does a new world owe the one it came from? What is the relationship between geography and the politics that shape it?
adventurous
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Often rambling, but incredibly detailed and full of love for Mars. Storyline and character takes second place to worldbuilding, but they're good enough to carry it along.
Personally I rate it 5 stars because (though you might not believe it) I actually do enjoy multi-page expositions of aspects of geology, politics or economics. If you're not such a strange individual, you might not agree, and I'd understand.
Don't take that backhanded complement the wrong way though - the plotting and characterisation are pretty good too.
Note: I was nearly put off by the first episode, which is a flash forward to a time somewhere after the middle of the novel. There is a layer of darkness to this episode, with a main character engaging first in a grimy murder, and then trying to spark a race riot. The book does not continue in this vein and takes a much more positive tone; while also putting this episode into context in the narrative.
Personally I rate it 5 stars because (though you might not believe it) I actually do enjoy multi-page expositions of aspects of geology, politics or economics. If you're not such a strange individual, you might not agree, and I'd understand.
Don't take that backhanded complement the wrong way though - the plotting and characterisation are pretty good too.
Note: I was nearly put off by the first episode, which is a flash forward to a time somewhere after the middle of the novel. There is a layer of darkness to this episode, with a main character engaging first in a grimy murder, and then trying to spark a race riot. The book does not continue in this vein and takes a much more positive tone; while also putting this episode into context in the narrative.
Sometimes the hardest books to read are the most rewarding and this was my experience with this book. Slowpaced, technical but brimming with ideas of how we would build civilisation on a different planet. Not just the technological aspects but what parts of our selves do we take up with us, love, jealousy, violence, beliefs, dance, culture, religion. And how does earth integrate to its colonies on another planet with its consumerist nature. Really heavy on the ideas but enough action and character progression to drive it forward. Anyone interested in the current talk of colonies on the moon would enjoy this book.
Terraforming Mars but swamped with Earth politics, economics and sociology..
An interesting dive into a possible alternative future...
An interesting dive into a possible alternative future...
Red Mars was a fascinating read that I thoroughly enjoyed. The world built within it's pages is well developed, believable, and fascinating. The book is divided up into sections that tell chunks of the story from different people's perspectives. This shift in perspectives helps keep the book fresh which is important given how dense it can often be.
Highly descriptive and varied situations help bring the world alive, and the large number of competing perspectives on what to do with Mars is fascinating.
I wish I could bring myself to give it a five star rating, but I can't quite do it. There are some periods where the book drags a bit, most notably large chunks of the ending. There is a long travel sequence full of heavy description of what Mars looks like, a quick situation change, and then another very long travel sequence full of new description of what Mars looks like. While the scenario was interesting these travel sections could have been trimmed drastically (especially the final one).
That said, I will definitely pick up the next one, and I will be interested to see where the next two parts of the trilogy take the world.
Highly descriptive and varied situations help bring the world alive, and the large number of competing perspectives on what to do with Mars is fascinating.
I wish I could bring myself to give it a five star rating, but I can't quite do it. There are some periods where the book drags a bit, most notably large chunks of the ending. There is a long travel sequence full of heavy description of what Mars looks like, a quick situation change, and then another very long travel sequence full of new description of what Mars looks like. While the scenario was interesting these travel sections could have been trimmed drastically (especially the final one).
That said, I will definitely pick up the next one, and I will be interested to see where the next two parts of the trilogy take the world.
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Unique book: Life, culture, the vibe of living on Mars is a thrill to read. I adored the beginning: initial settlement with 100 people, slowly building structures, exploring; just the kinda stuff I love to read.
Characters: mixed bag. Some I just couldn't get a grip on, others I kinda liked but then they are "gone" again as the point of view switches to the next one.
The long description of Martian landscapes are definitely over the top; the book felt never ending, slogging.
The storyline is really dragged out, and as you don't reaally connect to the characters, not very emotionally gripping.
Characters: mixed bag. Some I just couldn't get a grip on, others I kinda liked but then they are "gone" again as the point of view switches to the next one.
The long description of Martian landscapes are definitely over the top; the book felt never ending, slogging.
The storyline is really dragged out, and as you don't reaally connect to the characters, not very emotionally gripping.
Back to Mars. Great to be back with characters I'll never forget - Sax, Nadia, Hiroko Ai, Frank, Michel and even crazy Arkady. Still don't get on with John though. Maya is from another species entirely.
I've read a few of KSR's more recent books but I'm just now getting around to the one he's most known for. It's interesting to see that his environmentalist mindset and hatred of capitalism were already present in the early 90s. I guess he skipped the libertarian / ancap phase that many sci-fi authors seemed to go through (or maybe that's just a bubble I was in?).
The character Ann represents the most extreme environmentalist viewpoint: she is desperate to preserve Mars in its natural state, inconsolably depressed by the prospect of any terraforming. I think you could draw a connection between this impulse and, for example, NIMBYism in contemporary politics: when we come to know and love something beautiful (be it a rugged alien landscape, or a quaint low-density neighborhood of historic buildings), we can become fixated on preserving it, insensitive to the costs we impose on others by doing so. But in a universe subject to the first law of thermodynamics, the creation of something new must always be paid for by the transformation of something old. It isn't reasonable to try to hang on to every piece of beauty forever; we have to make space for new people, and for the new beauty they will embody and create.
Certainly it's worth preserving some - much! - of the past, but there has to be balance. There are, to put it mildly, a lot of planets out there. Demanding that they all be preserved untouched would be about as reasonable as demanding that every single meadow on Earth be declared a state park.
In Ministry for the Future Robinson imagines a cryptocurrency paid out for the prevention or negation of carbon emissions. Red Mars likewise gestures (vaguely) at a proposal for remaking the economy on a more ecologically-aware basis: "eco-economics" where calories are the fundamental unit of value. This doesn't sound promising to me. For one thing, calories don't even capture all of humanity's physical needs (how should this system value nutrients that are needed for full health but not survival, for example?). And as the book notes, a caloric value would have to be assigned to things like art arbitrarily. Assigning such value by fiat of a central authority sounds much more dystopian than our current system.
The character Arkady makes an interesting plea for engineering a new social order, pointing out the discrepancy between our control over the physical world and the haphazard nature of our social world:
But I think the analogy fails in two obvious ways. Reshaping the physical world can be done unilaterally (by an individual or group) as long as nobody more powerful cares enough to stop them; social change depends on a greater degree of consensus, and achieving consensus is very difficult. It's also especially difficult to scientifically determine what the impact of social policies will be - you can't run rigorously controlled experiments in economics nearly as easily as you can in physics.
One amusing observation in the book is that the project of initial colonization needs to find people "crazy enough to want to leave Earth forever, but sane enough to disguise this fundamental madness, in fact defend it as pure rationality, scientific curiosity or something of the sort..." The screening process for the mission searches for a psychological profile so unrealistic that in practice they're selecting for liars.
I must admit I zoned out a lot during the audiobook and I don't know whether that's a symptom or a cause of me liking this less than other KSR novels I've read.
Unrelated to anything, here's a nice quote:
(crosspost)
The character Ann represents the most extreme environmentalist viewpoint: she is desperate to preserve Mars in its natural state, inconsolably depressed by the prospect of any terraforming. I think you could draw a connection between this impulse and, for example, NIMBYism in contemporary politics: when we come to know and love something beautiful (be it a rugged alien landscape, or a quaint low-density neighborhood of historic buildings), we can become fixated on preserving it, insensitive to the costs we impose on others by doing so. But in a universe subject to the first law of thermodynamics, the creation of something new must always be paid for by the transformation of something old. It isn't reasonable to try to hang on to every piece of beauty forever; we have to make space for new people, and for the new beauty they will embody and create.
Certainly it's worth preserving some - much! - of the past, but there has to be balance. There are, to put it mildly, a lot of planets out there. Demanding that they all be preserved untouched would be about as reasonable as demanding that every single meadow on Earth be declared a state park.
In Ministry for the Future Robinson imagines a cryptocurrency paid out for the prevention or negation of carbon emissions. Red Mars likewise gestures (vaguely) at a proposal for remaking the economy on a more ecologically-aware basis: "eco-economics" where calories are the fundamental unit of value. This doesn't sound promising to me. For one thing, calories don't even capture all of humanity's physical needs (how should this system value nutrients that are needed for full health but not survival, for example?). And as the book notes, a caloric value would have to be assigned to things like art arbitrarily. Assigning such value by fiat of a central authority sounds much more dystopian than our current system.
The character Arkady makes an interesting plea for engineering a new social order, pointing out the discrepancy between our control over the physical world and the haphazard nature of our social world:
...we have technology to manipulate matter right down to the molecular level. This is an extraordinary ability! Think of it! And yet some of us here can accept transforming the entire physical reality of this planet without doing a single thing to change ourselves or the way we live.
But I think the analogy fails in two obvious ways. Reshaping the physical world can be done unilaterally (by an individual or group) as long as nobody more powerful cares enough to stop them; social change depends on a greater degree of consensus, and achieving consensus is very difficult. It's also especially difficult to scientifically determine what the impact of social policies will be - you can't run rigorously controlled experiments in economics nearly as easily as you can in physics.
One amusing observation in the book is that the project of initial colonization needs to find people "crazy enough to want to leave Earth forever, but sane enough to disguise this fundamental madness, in fact defend it as pure rationality, scientific curiosity or something of the sort..." The screening process for the mission searches for a psychological profile so unrealistic that in practice they're selecting for liars.
I must admit I zoned out a lot during the audiobook and I don't know whether that's a symptom or a cause of me liking this less than other KSR novels I've read.
Unrelated to anything, here's a nice quote:
I suppose it's this that makes me somehow happy. Have we ever been so free of choices? The past is wiped out. All that matters is now. The present, and the future. ... And, you know, you never really summon all of your strength until you know that there's no way back, no way to go but onward.
(crosspost)