Rating: 
Summary: Good sci-fi decends into bad politics
Review: Red Mars started off just dandy, with a variety of characters (a bit too one-dimensional, but hey) struggling with how to best colonize Mars. No one was a 'good' guy or a 'bad' guy - just good hard sci-fi mixed with honest ideological differences.Halfway through the book, however, it all changed. All of a sudden, Trans-national corporations are launching nukes, after buying out the United Nations. Christian fundamentalists try to dominate the colonies. A few hundred scientists on Mars discover wildly optimistic technologies, while the billions of people on Earth decend into chaos, primarily because of those darn evil trans-nationals. What started out as a balanced and interesting book jumped clear off the left end. I'll only read the sequels because I want to read all the Hugo and Nebula award winners - not because I have any hope for the rest of the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Believable Characters in Complex Political Conflicts
Review: The first 100 colonists on Mars were crazy enough to want to leave Earth forever, and smart enough to fool the psychological tests for the Mars mission. Neither they nor the patchwork consortium of world powers who sent them could agree why they were there or what they wanted from Mars. To Phyllis, Mars was a geological treasure-trove for commercial usage. To Ann, Mars was a museum of geology to be preserved as much as possible in its natural state. To Sax, it was a laboratory for bioengineering experimentation; to Arkady, a laboratory for social reform. To Nadia, it was the supreme test of her genius for cold-weather engineering. To John Boone, the group's charismatic figurehead, it was the sum of what everyone else wanted it to be: he just wanted the First 100 to stand united. No one knew what Frank Chalmers wanted -- but whatever it was, John Boone stood in his way. Most fans of Red Mars rave about its scientific realism, but I've never cared one way or another about the technicalities of speculating plausible future technologies. Instead, I recommend this book for its broad epic vision, its believably complex political situation, and its portrayal of strong but flawed characters confronting difficult situations with ingenuity, hope, and courage. I particularly like the way Robinson explores the complex relationship between John Boone, the First Man on Mars, and his fame -- between a human being & the legend that arose in his wake. The book isn't perfect -- some things the author seemed to be setting up don't pay off, and I could have done without having the most obnoxious character incessantly identified as a "Christian" -- but it's an absorbing, memorable adventure.
Rating: 
Summary: Socialist Screed = A Tedious Trilogy
Review: Sorry, but it does not take a "McCarthyite" to notice the obvious retrograde socialist apologia in KSR's unremittingly tedious "Red Mars" trilogy. KSR's tiresome agenda, featuring one-sided attacks on the West, America, capitalism and libertarians, is presented without logical or honest rebuttal. (The same frothing-at-the-mouth political rants interrupt the narrative of his book "Antarctica.") Here are some examples from the RM trilogy: "We're in a war between democracy and capitalism..." (John Boone, from RM.) A false dichotomy; there's no inherent conflict between "democracy" and capitalism. KSR should've said, "we're in a war between socialism and capitalism," a more believable conflict. However, it's clear that KSR believes his socialist fantasy IS democracy. "There was no obvious reason why they [the Martian underground] should all want to become one single thing. Many of them had been trying specifically to get away from dominant powers - transnationals, the West, America, capitalism - all the totalizing systems of power. A central system was just what they had gone to great lengths to get away from." (Green Mars.) Note this list - the evil "transnationals," "the West," "America," "capitalism" - your agenda is showing, Kim. Yet KSR has the inhabitants of Mars - basically, frontiersmen from earth, whose politics would logically be scattered across the spectrum - vote overwhelmingly to establish a socialist system that's inherently a centralized government. It bans private ownership of land, controls businesses' sizes, forces them to be employee-owned, limits companies to 1000 employees, and bans people from passing on wealth to their children beyond a certain amount, so people can't "accumulate capital." (This leads to a discussion between Sax and Coyote, where Sax notes, quite rightly, that from a biological standpoint, parents want to take care of their children. Whereupon Coyote, with typical socialist elitist arrogance, says, "Maybe there should be a minimum inheritance allowed... enough to satisfy that animal instinct, but not enough to perpetuate a wealthy elite." And who determines "what's too much?" Yep, you guessed it - the ruling socialist oligarchy, who'll enforce their will at the point of a gun.) In "Green Mars," KSR presents the character of Nadia (Russian ancestry) condemning people who want minimal government on Mars: "...Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves!" This statement, issued without rebuttal or debate, seems to show KSR's true colors: that anyone who wants limited government is an "anarchist." Nonsense! (KSR then seems to completely miss the irony of having Nadia, who becomes Mars' first president, turn into a petty, despotic ruler, despite dozens of pages explaining all the "benefits" of Mars' socialistic system over Earth's. This plot point is simply dropped in "Blue Mars" as inconvenient.) There were other bizarre anti-capitalist, quasi-Marxist rants sprinkled throughout the book. KSR repeatedly attacks business owners and "managers" as "not doing any real work." This is the typical Marxist mindset - to KSR's type of socialist/statist thinking, it's always 1864, where all "workers" are noble peasants or guys who toil with their hands on assembly lines, while "managers" are fat-cat burghers who sit in their offices, getting up occasionally only to crack the whip. Kim, if I "work" at any profession that earns me money - whether I'm laying bricks or managing a Fortune 500 company - then I am a "worker." This is another false dichotomy - as if those who work with their "hands" are superior to those who sit in offices working only with their "brains." Kind of a hypocritical notion coming from someone who makes his living writing SF stories about Martians, don't you think? Other weird rants: KSR's idea of "ecologic economics" - a concept that smacks of the ex-Soviets' mantra of "scientific" communism. This theme also recurred throughout the book - that human activities can be reduced to a "scientific" model, and that if only dumb humanity agreed to have scientists plan our society, then everything would be fine. Activities that fail to pay off their value in required "caloric intake" are worthless? (There's that elitist socialist oligarchical arrogance again.) And, what are we to make of the "Red Mars" section heading called "What is to be Done?" - the title of one of Lenin's political pamphlets - and Frank Chalmer's characterization of people as "useful idiots?" (An apocryphal phrase attributed to Lenin of westerners who would stupidly assist the Communists in the West's own destruction.) Could KSR's Communist/socialist apologia be any more clear? The bottom line is the issue of literature vs. propaganda. As Anthony Burgess stated , a fiction writer should always be in service to the story, first and foremost. If you're presenting a didactic agenda, regardless of whose side you're on, then your work is propaganda, not literature. If the socialist system depicted in the "Red Mars" trilogy had developed organically out of the various characters and situations presented in the books, then if would've been believable. However, KSR forces the characters to become nothing more than ranting mouthpieces for his fantasy ideology. This agenda then succeeds in committing the worst sin in fiction. Halfway through "Green Mars," I was so worn out by the humorless characters that I realized I didn't care about any of them or their plight (with the exception of Sax, the only sympathetic character in the entire damn trilogy.) Towards the end of "Green Mars," I realized that not only did I not care, I actually wanted most of the characters to be killed, have their revolution fail, and have the transnationals take over. When your political agenda succeeds in actually turning your readers against your protagonists and their struggles, then your story has failed.
Rating: 
Summary: A bad novel but a great adventure! Fascinating!
Review: Chutzpah! That's the word that comes to mind when I think about Kim Stanley Robinson sitting down one day and saying, "hmmm, I think I'll write a detailed, scientifically rigorous, realistic book (actually trilogy) about the human colonization of another planet -specifically, Mars. And besides the science and technology of it, I'll basically write a 'how to' guide, listing all the potential problems, in terms of politics, philosophy, economics, sociology, ecology, and human psychology. Finally, I'll explore how developments on Earth affect the Martian colonization effort, and vice versa. And, finally, I'll make all this both intelligent enough to be read by a scientist and understandable (and entertaining) enough for the average reader. No problem! " And somehow, for the most part, Kim Stanley Robinson pulls it off. Sure, the characters can be one-dimensional and even grating and annoying, the plot can get confusing (and melodramatic at times - epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, friendships forming and falling to pieces - yikes, sounds like a bad romance novel!), and the whole book sometimes feels like it's about to come crashing down like the space elevator (Robinson is NOT a great narrative writer, that's for sure!), but still....what a vision, what an ambitious undertaking, what a tremendous amount of research obviously went into this, and what a fascinating subject! This is true SCIENCE fiction, and a credible vision (even a blueprint) for what human colonization of Mars (and the future of Earth) could be like in the not-too-distant future. Personally, after reading (I admit, sometimes it felt like slogging through) this book, I now believe that human colonization of Mars is realistic, not just a dream, and with technology now in existence, under development, or within our g rasp in the coming decades (nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, etc.) Finally, after reading "Red Mars" I came to believe that is not only FEASIBLE to colonize Mars, but probably (I still have my doubts, especially if we just make the same mistakes we have made in screwing up the Earth) WORTH it as well. My major problems with "Red Mars": the characters can be cardboard/one-dimensional, annoying, stereotypical (i.e. Sax - the brilliant, rational, but passionless, at least on the surface, scientist; Ann - the moody, emotional, also brilliant in her own way, "Red Mars" purist ; Hiroko - the mysterious Japanese "Green Mars" cult figure; John Boone - the politician, etc.; Coyote -- the mysterious revoluationary/anarchist), and even laughable at times; the plot can get very confusing, especially with its cast of thousands and its unfamiliar places and names (more and better maps, plus a top-notch appendix, would have been extremely helpful!); things can get repetitive (how many times can we hear the same basic Red/Green argument, for instance, without getting sick of it?), and the writing style can be dry (LOTS of technobabble), humorless, and verrrry slow, and also so predictable at times you can see things coming 50 pages away. Is this great fiction? Definitely not -- in fact it's pretty bad at times! Is this a great book? Well, I wouldn't go THAT far! Is this a great accomplishment? Well, yes, most definitely! If you're at all interested in space exploration, and specifically Mars, I strongly recommend that you read this book. After reading "Red Mars," I'm ready to sign up for the first mission to Mars - when do we leave?
Rating:
Summary: Scientific Poetry
Review: Red Mars is like nothing I have read. It's a story of the first hundred people to colonize Mars. The plot is a bit predictable, but interesting nonetheless, and a sort of mystery develops early on in the book. Set in a world described in excruciating detail, I was awed by how scientifically accurate this book was, making it very believable. I'm normally not a fan of political struggles, but Kim Stanley Robinson has made the political struggles of the Red Planet worth reading about, and very intriguing. I would not call this a traditional sf work. This is beyond FICTION....it could easily be our future; a some-day history book.
Rating: 
Summary: A good look at space colonisation for the next century
Review: Robinson's book was certainly one of the best SF novels I've read so far. Although his book lacks many of the wonderful scientific ideas that other hard SF authors use (i.e. Baxter), it is well made up by the entertaining plot and careful character development. In many SF novels, the characters are dull, wooden and shallow and are little more than vessels to help the plot along. But Robinson throws in a diverse and interesting set of scientists and he takes great care to developing and describing their relationships, interactions and how they cope with the harsh conditions that beset them on the space mission and on Mars. Whilst the science in the novel is fairly standard, it is the development of important social, political and historical themes running through the novel that make it so good. Although at times Robinson involves some unneeded cynicism along certain themes, such as religion, human greed, social customs and environmentalism, overall the weaving together of the social, political, economic and scientific issues that are likely to be part of any sustained human occupation on Mars is very well done. - Greg
Rating:
Summary: Too ambitious
Review: It's hard to know whether to admire this novel's grand ambitions or to be disappointed at its failure to meet them. The novel aspires to be both a hard-science outline of how Mars could be colonized and a vision of how society on Mars would be different from society on Earth. Robinson is surely correct with his key insight that the social problems in colonizing Mars will be even more daunting than the scientific ones. But he bites off more than he can chew, with shallow mini-lectures on sociology, psychology, theology, economics, and more. It's a book that wants to be about everything, and of course it can't be. The biggest disappointment is the facile rejection of market economics -- which at the end of the 20th century seemed poised to dominate the 21st -- as a model for Mars. Instead the author caricatures this philosophy and trots out transnational corporations and a greedy Christian fundamentalist as the villains. Robinson also dodges the foundation of economics -- scarcity -- with scientific gizmos that makes Mars a nearly infinite source of food and mineral resources. Of course, there are good reasons why capitalism might be a bad model for Mars, but the author doesn't give us any of these. Instead the author paints a world of unlimited resources -- making the price-setting mechanisms of capitalism moot -- and some caricatures of corporate greed that sound like a Ralph Nader pamphlet. In this book about everything Robinson does a superb job with areoagraphy, a middling job with the social sciences, and a poor job with economics.
Rating:
Summary: Dull! Dull! Dull!
Review: I purchased this book because it won a Nebula award. With all due respect to Mr. Robinson, this book is dull. It is a mindnumbingly dull read because of the endless exposition. It just goes on and on and on and it takes forever for anything to happen. You'll either love this book or hate it. I didn't like it and I opted not to read the sequels.
Rating:
Summary: A man's book
Review: I was told that this book was excellent and that it had won awards. Well, after reading it, I can't say I cared for it. Too much sex and politcs. After thinking about it, I realized that those whom had recommended to book to me were men. After talking to some other females, they agreed with me. So, this must be a man's book!
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read for Mars-heads and Futurists, others too
Review: Considering I'm both a Mars-head and a futurist, five stars was a very easy call. Red Mars fanned my interest in planetary exploration to a blaze. KS Robinson's detailed prose about the Martian landscape and well-formed depictions of the people and technologies that would pave the way for exploration made the dream of extraterrestrial human settlement tantalizingly real. For the first half of the book, I looked at all of the technology and thought, "We can DO this!" From their spacecraft to their environment suits to their settlements, everything seemed so close that with an ounce of political will, it could all happen. For those who prefer more futuristic (but also supposedly feasible) gadgets from their scifi authors, Robinson makes a couple of assumptions about materials science and biotech, and gives us a carbon-filament space elevator (built by self-replicating "von Neumann" machines) anti-aging treatments, and organisms that can survive the harsh Martian climate. Although some may disagree, his extrapolation of the sociological implications of these advances is also compelling. Some have sneered at the "Red" in Red Mars with the scorn of a true McCarthyite. Those reviewers ignore the fact that the bulk of the people in spacefaring countries on Earth (not to mention scientists in general) are a bit to the left of most Americans. Seen from this perspective, the mildly socialist viewpoints expressed in the book are not only explicable, but an insightful prediction of future progressive cultures. To explore all of these grand ideas, KS Robinson creates a fairly large cast of fascinating characters. While it is apparent that some of them exist mostly to advocate one viewpoint or another (Sax - the scientific wonder of terraforming, Anne - the bare grandeur of the original "Red" Mars, Arkady - the sociological possibilities of another world, Phyllis - crass commercial exploitation) they are given fleshed-out personalities and their relationships with each other are still a good reason to read the book. Drawbacks: Some are upset that rather than having an adventure-story plot, Red Mars is half an Audubon Guide and half a historical narrative about the trials of the First Hundred, then the first hundred thousand settlers on Mars. Others, as I have said, dislike his politics. Most comment on his lengthy descriptions of geological formations on Mars. Personally, I liked these (but make the next edition with a glossary, please!) Still, if these had been replaced with panoramic, full-color artist's renderings, that would probably have helped most readers. In all, one of my favorite books of all time and truly deserving of all the awards and praise it got.
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