Rating: 
Summary: The best book(s) I've ever read. Buy it.
Review: Closed-minded capitalist Americans may find Stan's politics hard to stomach, but I agree with pretty much everything in this book. As the review quote on the front of my edition says: "Let most of it be true."Certainly, there is a lot of description and detail about Mars as a planet - the rocks, the canyons, the mesas - but without that, the author's vision of Mars would be hard to believe or comprehend. Ditto the science and terraforming. The Mars trilogy is no action-packed thriller; buy "Independence Day" if you want to see charismatic US presidents save the world. No, this book is a deeply moving and detailed future-history, which - every time I had to put it down - left me believing it was true, that this is how it will happen, how it has to happen. The characters are by no means one-dimensional or stereotypical, as others have claimed. Ten or so of the First Hundred are developed in great detail, and are extremely believable characterisations; Nadia, John, Frank, Ann, Sax, Maya, Arkady, Hiroko, Michel, Desmond... and then in Green Mars, Peter, Nirgal and Jackie. You need to read the whole trilogy to get a full understanding of the characters. Red Mars was obviously not written to be read by itself - you need the other two books. The science in the Mars trilogy is only a matter of years away. The space elevator is in fact the invention of St Petersburg engineer Yuri Artsutanov, over 20 years ago. He picturesquely called it a "cosmic funicular," but it was the same concept of laying a cable from the Earth (or in this case, Mars) to a satellite hovering over the same spot on the Equator. The theory is impeccable: but does any material exist with sufficient tensile strength to hang all the way down to the Equator from an altitude of 36 000 kilometres, with enough margin left over to raise useful payloads? Again, KSR deals with this problem easily, with carbon nanotube ("buckytube") cabling. In fact, NASA have been attempting this on a smaller scale with the Shuttle Atlantis in 1992 and again in 1996. The gerontological (life extension) treatment is also perfectly plausible to me. Anyone who claims these things are "impossible" needs to take a look around and stop being afraid of change. If you want to know what humanity will be like in 20, 40 or 200 years, read this trilogy.
Rating: 
Summary: Horribly flawed book
Review: Robinson seems to revel in pointing out his knowledge of useless trivia in all fields. While this might let you win on Jeopardy, it doesn't make for a good book. Nor do simplistic characters make for a good book - we have little reason to feel for any of them and motive is visibly lacking. The main motive, as other reviewers point out, seems to be to further KSR's political beliefs. I didn't see too much of a Communist tinge here but I saw plenty of one-sided political-religious discussion. The idea that Islam is perfect (except for its treatment of women, alleviated by Islamic female characters otherwise loyal to the religion but seeking an egalitarian approach) and that any other religious people are nutty fundamentalists is widespread. Worse than the useless trivia, poor characterization and political ranting though is the unexcusable sin of a write - it wasn't interesting to read. Give us all your views, your useless knowledge and bad characters, but give us a good book at least. Robinson fails to do even this, and as a result I have no other option than to give his book only one star.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but don't knock yourself out.
Review: This series (I read all of them) was good, and is truly, as A.C. Clarke said, "The best book on the colonization of mark" that has ever been. That being said -- come on! There was a lot of crap in these books. Elusive characters that each have one big, fat character trait (Maya is angry and flighty, Frank is petty and scheming, blahblahblah, Jackie is scheming). Little quips about Japanese, like throwing "shigata ga nai" all the time (I live in Japan and speak Japanese, and cringe whenever a write has his characters speaking Japanese "because it's the future"). (Are you listening, Gentry Lee???). Way too much detail about the terraforming bit of it, and for all tha it was not believable (that gene therapy that allows people to live in high CO2 environments was just SO convenient). What this series does best, strangely, is paint a reasonable, interesting picture of what Earth would be like in the future, with multinat corporations and what not. Also, the best description of how robot factories and space elevators might work -- that was interesing. All in all, this work would have been far better as one 600 page book, instead of three 500 page books. That would have been just golden.
Rating:
Summary: The future is already here!
Review: There's not much to be said about Red mars that hasn't been said before. KSR's excellent book makes for one of the most riveting reads ever. All the characters seem to be well rounded and the fact that each part of the book views events from a specific characters point of view lends to the feeling that maybe this could be a factual account. The dipping in and out of timeframes is a great way of showing the passing of time and its effects on the characters. This is one of those brilliant books that you just can't put down. Now, when's the movie going to be made?
Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels ever written
Review: 100 colonists, dubbed The First Hundred, are in a ship called Ares on the way to Mars at the beginning of this epic novel. If I told you anything else, it would ruin something. This book is just about the best novel I've ever read. It is the most realistic novel written about the colonization of Mars (and there really have been a great many about that subject). The science and politics are believable and the characters are developed to a level that I have not seen since the some of the great American classics. This book is truly a pillar in science fiction writing and is an incredible start to the series. I read it in two sittings, which, for a 700+ page book, is really a feat. If you like Robinson and are interested in Mars, this book is a MUST read. If you are concerned why others did not rank the book so highly it is probably because they might have been expecting more action or the highly descriptive paragraphs about the Martian landscape, science and technology, and characters used in the novel bored them. If you do not find these things interesting, then the book might not be a 5 star (it might be a 4 star...or a 3 star if you just want some light reading), but I believe that these attributes add to the depth of the novel and its overall quality. It is not a light read or action-packed, like Dune, but it doesn't have to be. It's just an incredible book.
Rating:
Summary: DISAPPOINTING: ok plot, flat characters, lame prose
Review: The story opens strong, but quickly deteriorates into one of those novels that you trudge through just to finish it off. The plot's ok, but I can't believe the reviews I've read here that praise the "realistic" characters: on the contrary, I found the characters so stereotyped and flat that I found myself rolling my eyes reading about them. And if you enjoy good prose, you'll find this book a bit of a torture to read. Take a pass on this book.
Rating:
Summary: A tiresome, wrong-headed political screed -- not good SF.
Review: Although I found the "Red Mars" books to be extremely literate and mostly well-written hard SF, unfortunately, the story was damaged beyond repair by Robinson's ham-fisted, one-sided, retrograde socialist apologia. In this trilogy, the ranting attacks on the West, America, capitalism and libertarians, presented by the characters without logical or honest rebuttal, came across as amazingly ignorant and arrogant. 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 books -- and a character's label 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.) I find it tough to believe these are coincidences - and if they're jokes, they're pretty poor ones. What could've been an excellent trilogy turns into a tiresome, wrong-headed political screed. Skip this trilogy -- read Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" and "Endymion" books instead.
Rating:
Summary: You have to admit, this book has big flaws, BUT...
Review: Yes, it's true, this book has a lot of problems. The plot jumps around too much, skips over periods of time longer than a lot of its readers have been alive, introduces you to things that you think will be a huge part of the storyline, but then forgets about them for 300 pages. Some of the most important characters will be completely ignored for hundreds of pages, making you forget about them so much that when they are reintroduced into the story, you feel like you have to go back and read their chapter over again. The author seems to have an extremely warped sense of time, as things happen in ten years in this book that would take 100 in real life. Those are just a select few of the many flaws in this book. But despite all these flaws, some of them very substantial and impossible to ignore, I LOVED this book. And that is why this book won awards, receives tons of acclaim by critics and readers, etc. Because even with very serious problems and flaws, it is captivating and brilliant. I was interested in Mars colonization long before I read this book, but I think that even a person who knows absolutely nothing about Mars would find it fascinating, and want to learn more. The characters are more realistic than any I have ever read, the beautiful descriptions of the settings make you feel like you are on Mars yourself, and the author is able to keep even the most science-wary reader interested even among all the scientific subjects, technical descriptions, etc. by throwing in exciting plot twists at just the right times. Red Mars is an epic saga, following the colonization of Mars from the arrival of the first hundred people and the construction of the first colony, to a planet teeming with cities, industry, and life. Late in the book when characters from the First Hundred look back on their early years on the planet in reminiscence, longing for everything to return to how it was then, you look back with the same feelings, and feel like a part of the First Hundred yourself, looking back on experiences you had decades ago. I could go on all day about the many wonderful things about this book. But I won't. I just want to warn all potential readers: Don't put Red Mars down (or abstain from picking it up in the first place) because of the flaws! Give it a chance, and you will be very glad that you did.
Rating:
Summary: Best Sci-Fi I've read in a long time
Review: Not so much a flight of fancy as a detailed description of what the colonization and terraforming of mars would involve. Scientific and engineering details. Very impressive work.
Rating:
Summary: Can you say "smug"?
Review: First of all, the parts some people found tedious I rather enjoyed: the description of the planet, the science, although I doubt the latter is all that realistic (an eternal youth treatment???). My problem is with the economics and politics, and which seem to be taken straight out of Marxist theory, and are hardly subtle. They dominate the book to the extend that it almost makes it look like a political treatise rather than a novel, and there's nothing I dislike as much as an editorial piece disguised as science fiction. What irritated me even more is the author's obvious pride in his "cultural sensitivity." He goes to great trouble to show how Maya's Russianness affects her behavior, and to describe various groups from different countries (Arab, Swiss). And it's mostly hogwash. I know his ideas of Russian culture come from silly American stereotypes and not any deep knowledge. He even gets such a detail as having patronymics instead of middle names wrong. Worse, he invents non-existent Russian concepts and misuses the few Russian words he knows ("babushka" and "baba-yaga" come to mind). He presents Maya as an impossible stereotype of a fiery Russian woman. All this makes me think that the details about the Arabs and the Swiss are just as unreliable. How dare he make things up about a culture and basically sell it to the reader as the truth, give the reader the impression that he's learning something! It's the same disrespect for the truth as comes out in his Marxism, and the worst kind of self-congratulation and cultural INsensitivity.
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