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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Red Mars has gained it's place between my favorite science-fiction books, sharing the self with masterpieces by A.C.Clarke and as a fan of the genre I'm more than happy to give it five stars.
Firstly the book has an emphasis the science part, while leaving the fiction in regular level. I read somewhere that K.S. Robinson gathered the materials for the book for more than ten years and the job he has done is admirable. And the science doesn't just end with Mathematics of Physics (which, if present, are always explained) but also includes engineering, geography, psychology, chemistry in the levels of alchemy and many more. And every time when something new is added a thought on the lines "This is the best invention" pops into your mind, but then something new catches your attention over and over again.
Even though it belongs to the science-fiction genre, the book is surprisingly realistic. Perhaps it is because if anything can go wrong, it most probably will. Experiments fail, people are cheating bastards, people die, reactors suffer breakdowns and the airship almost crashed in the middle of a red desert. And those are just a small proportion of things that go wrong when they can. They don't live in an utopia, but it is not a dystopia also, well not in all parts of the book anyhow. To gain something the characters have to work hard, noticing the always present threat of solar radiation and the trans-national corporations are taking over the solar system (because the world isn't enough for those greedy things).
The parts of the book are all told strictly from the point of view of a different observer, eight parts in total and eight different main characters in them. Just as with science the characters are made likable and unlikable as the story progresses and they can be seen from the points of view of others or themselves.
The scale of the world is always emphasized (perhaps overly emphasized) in the book and it is visible through all the adventures, because come to think of it - Mars is only a bit smaller than Earth.
What I enjoyed immensely (except for the elaborate science descriptions of course) was the complex political and religious system created on both Mars and Earth. Only several years into the future Earth has been put under the rule of trans-national corporations, even if the countries are still standing, if in name only. How it played out with relation to the Mars project was amazing. Also the man-made religion, the mars religion, which is a pleasant strain of paganism, is surprisingly enticing and I found myself learning the name of Mars in plenty of languages, just because it sounds nice.
If this book was ever remade into a film, the moment I would like to see is Hiroko's arrival in the celebration.
Firstly the book has an emphasis the science part, while leaving the fiction in regular level. I read somewhere that K.S. Robinson gathered the materials for the book for more than ten years and the job he has done is admirable. And the science doesn't just end with Mathematics of Physics (which, if present, are always explained) but also includes engineering, geography, psychology, chemistry in the levels of alchemy and many more. And every time when something new is added a thought on the lines "This is the best invention" pops into your mind, but then something new catches your attention over and over again.
Even though it belongs to the science-fiction genre, the book is surprisingly realistic. Perhaps it is because if anything can go wrong, it most probably will. Experiments fail, people are cheating bastards, people die, reactors suffer breakdowns and the airship almost crashed in the middle of a red desert. And those are just a small proportion of things that go wrong when they can. They don't live in an utopia, but it is not a dystopia also, well not in all parts of the book anyhow. To gain something the characters have to work hard, noticing the always present threat of solar radiation and the trans-national corporations are taking over the solar system (because the world isn't enough for those greedy things).
The parts of the book are all told strictly from the point of view of a different observer, eight parts in total and eight different main characters in them. Just as with science the characters are made likable and unlikable as the story progresses and they can be seen from the points of view of others or themselves.
The scale of the world is always emphasized (perhaps overly emphasized) in the book and it is visible through all the adventures, because come to think of it - Mars is only a bit smaller than Earth.
What I enjoyed immensely (except for the elaborate science descriptions of course) was the complex political and religious system created on both Mars and Earth. Only several years into the future Earth has been put under the rule of trans-national corporations, even if the countries are still standing, if in name only. How it played out with relation to the Mars project was amazing. Also the man-made religion, the mars religion, which is a pleasant strain of paganism, is surprisingly enticing and I found myself learning the name of Mars in plenty of languages, just because it sounds nice.
If this book was ever remade into a film, the moment I would like to see is Hiroko's arrival in the celebration.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Most of the stars come because this is the seminal work on settling Mars. 50% of the book is about the characters' weird sex lives - including some hints to child SA. The other 50% is involving the science of settling Mars (which is what I wanted to read), but nearly all of it has since the time of writing been proven impossible due to the results returned from the Mars' Rovers. It took me a really long time therefore to suspend my disbelief.
(May contain 'spoilers', although you probably aren't reading KSR for the cliff hangers and surprise endings)
Edit (30th of December, 2023, after second reading): I'm glad that my opinion on this book was rather different upon a second reading a decade after the first. It means the reader has changed, but based on my comments below I'm still me. I'm now much more deeply fascinated by the threads that hold society together, and how they might be rewoven, for example on a newly colonized only world loosely coupled to Earth. This deepened my tendency to engage with the book on its own terms. I'm also a bit more appreciative of the historical nature of a speculative work written in the 80s and published in the early 90s, and perhaps I wasn't in 2014. I did still find the first third of the book more engaging, and I did still find the whole genetic life elongation treatment thing to be a superfluous SF concept mixed into an already busy conceptual palette. Why do I need to ponder how elongated lives will upend society while I'm also pondering extra-terrestrial colonization?!?
I look forward to my third reading some time in the mid 2030s!
[Original review below]
I like KSR's style. His characters somehow give me a taste of the author's vision of what the greater human spirit should become. Each one seems to embody huge concepts like "The Revolution" or "Environmentalism". On one hand this is fascinating, but it comes at the expense of the reader's ability to empathize with the characters. And it makes it harder to read about the characters for a full 579 pages.
This book is very broad in scope because of that it seemed vague at times. The combination of the discontinuities in time, the narrator changes and the grand scope and ideas left me occasionally tired, lost or bored. There were too many major ideas, like the discoveries in medicine and the engineering feats, that were just thrown in without any build up. You have to add the flour slowly or you get lumps. During the early parts of the book when things were relatively linear and small scale, I was totally wrapped up in this book, but I was counting the pages until being done by the time I was three quarters through.
I'm glad I read 2312 first, because unlike this book it compelled me to continue exploring KSR's work.
Edit (30th of December, 2023, after second reading): I'm glad that my opinion on this book was rather different upon a second reading a decade after the first. It means the reader has changed, but based on my comments below I'm still me. I'm now much more deeply fascinated by the threads that hold society together, and how they might be rewoven, for example on a newly colonized only world loosely coupled to Earth. This deepened my tendency to engage with the book on its own terms. I'm also a bit more appreciative of the historical nature of a speculative work written in the 80s and published in the early 90s, and perhaps I wasn't in 2014. I did still find the first third of the book more engaging, and I did still find the whole genetic life elongation treatment thing to be a superfluous SF concept mixed into an already busy conceptual palette. Why do I need to ponder how elongated lives will upend society while I'm also pondering extra-terrestrial colonization?!?
I look forward to my third reading some time in the mid 2030s!
[Original review below]
I like KSR's style. His characters somehow give me a taste of the author's vision of what the greater human spirit should become. Each one seems to embody huge concepts like "The Revolution" or "Environmentalism". On one hand this is fascinating, but it comes at the expense of the reader's ability to empathize with the characters. And it makes it harder to read about the characters for a full 579 pages.
This book is very broad in scope because of that it seemed vague at times. The combination of the discontinuities in time, the narrator changes and the grand scope and ideas left me occasionally tired, lost or bored. There were too many major ideas, like the discoveries in medicine and the engineering feats, that were just thrown in without any build up. You have to add the flour slowly or you get lumps. During the early parts of the book when things were relatively linear and small scale, I was totally wrapped up in this book, but I was counting the pages until being done by the time I was three quarters through.
I'm glad I read 2312 first, because unlike this book it compelled me to continue exploring KSR's work.
Loved it. Although I missed a lot of things I expected when reading a book about the colonization of Mars and disliked several things (everything seemed too easy and there were just few struggles, no problems of getting heavy things to Mars, the way how KSR prolonged the life of all characters by this miraculous drug etc.) in overall I really enjoyed the story and the way the book was written. Also a great plus for this book was that even though the book was written in 1993 I hadn't noticed the missing internet and our digital reality etc (this was always a huge problem for classic sci-fi books for me). The best was definitely the ending, with that great Mars revolution, class struggle, open endings and everything else... can't wait for second part!
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Boring, and too long to wait for it to get better.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
For me, this was a very slow book yet I stil really enjoyed it.
This is mainly because from beginnin to end it just felt so believable both on a scientific and a social level. Even post mars occupation politics felt genuine and very comparable today.
Although a broad range of characters I thought their development was weak and couldn't relate to any, but I don't think that matters for the purpose of this story.
I will need to take a bit of a break before I move to the next in the trilogy, but certainly will do at some point.
This is mainly because from beginnin to end it just felt so believable both on a scientific and a social level. Even post mars occupation politics felt genuine and very comparable today.
Although a broad range of characters I thought their development was weak and couldn't relate to any, but I don't think that matters for the purpose of this story.
I will need to take a bit of a break before I move to the next in the trilogy, but certainly will do at some point.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Good Sci-fi books are not only heavy on the science (some of which goes over my head) but they also ask ethically charged questions. In this one, the first settlers of Mars split into factions that are pro-terraforming and anti terraforming. It begs the question, what right would humans have to change a planet to meet their needs? Should we adapt to live in conditions normally hostile to our well-being or should we adapt those conditions so that they're not hostile to us. I'll probably go back and read the next book in this series; another trait of good sci-fi: one book just won't tell the whole story.