GREEN MARS

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Warning: contains some spoilers, mostly regarding Red Mars.

Other reviewers have beaten me to some of the better criticisms of Green Mars: the endless dialogues that merely rehash themes from Red, the irritating pseudo-socialism, the ludicrous indefatigability and resourcefulness of the characters, etc.

I'd like to add two points. First, I swear to Almighty God that if I ever meet KSR--be it in a social setting or just at the supermarket--I will punch him square in the face and say "That's for you and your @#$%ing eco-economics!"

My second point is somewhat more serious: unlike Red Mars, the novel has no central human story. In Red, Robinson rather excellently used John, Frank, and Maya's love triangle both to hold the novel together and add some character-based tension: did Frank intend for John to die in the Nicacea riot? if so, was it motivated by jealousy or politics, or both? will Maya find out? if so, will she be able to forgive Frank?

All of this was, however, completely lacking in the sequel. The only relationship with any successful tension is between Sax and Phyllis, and it hardly frames the novel.

In Red Mars Robinson pulled-off a rather staggering feat: however imperfectly, he wrote a HS Fiction novel about the colonization of Mars while creating a competent host of characters and even a couple of interesting relationships. He just didn't have it in him to do it twice.

Rating:
Summary: everything is fascinating, everything is good
Review: When I read Amazon.com reader reviews, I start at the lowest rated for any particular book first and then move up into reviews that are more laudatory. With respect to Green Mars, it is interesting to me that people find Kim Stanley Robinson bad at plot or characterization. Regarding the first, I disagree. He is dealing with human colonization of Mars. That is an enormous scope. His character Sax, trying to unearth the causes of the World War in 2061, explains it best: that huge events such as the war he was researching (or the colonization of Mars about which the author is writing) cannot be understood with a narrow focus, or without years unfolding.

His characterization is really good. He has sympathetic characters and unlikeable characters, both types with flaws. The technique that allows him to do this is that each section is from the point of view of different main characters. Thus, the reader can learn both about the motivations and thoughts of that particular character, as well as what that character observes about other characters (luckily his characters are curious, observant people): Ann Clayborne like a heron on the shores of the lake under the southern polar ice cap, for example, in the eyes of Sax.

What really stands out for me is his characterization of women. Many male authors (of science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, spy thrillers, medical thrillers...) use one female character opposite their main male character. She is usually tall, strong, beautiful, and intelligent, because the author says so and because his main male character is attracted to her. The author doesn't necessarily show it to be so. Kim Stanley Robinson on the other hand creates female characters that are believable as humans, by showing us what they do and also by showing us how they think of themselves. Nadia is practical, chubby, plain, good at engineering and construction, her passion; she is a peacemaker, always urging moderation and non-violence, who cares for others (Maya, Nirgal, Art), missing a finger, missing Arkady, a lover of jazz. Maya, whose vanished beauty was so important in her life as a young women, who tries to control other people, particularly men, hates the younger rising beauty Jackie as a competitor, learns to "seduce" people to her cause via persuasion instead of shreiking in anger forcing them to her side. Hiroko, whom no one understands, how frustrating that is for Maya.

I enjoyed the chapters about Sax as Stephen Lindholm, the biologist, particularly when he is out exploring new plants on an expedition where Phyllis has tagged along. Phyllis is a phony. Sax is trying to show her plants and other interesting features about the world outside, and Phyllis, for a biologist, is stunningly incurious. That really, really rang true for me. I am a biology teacher and I can say that I have been outdoors with people (adults) countless times who are not only oblivious to this teaming biosphere of which we are a part, but who simply don't care. Each time it takes me be surprise - What you don't care that the Swainson's Thrush are back for the summer? What you don't care that the salal berries are ripe and that you can eat them? These people - these people who lack curiosity - baffle me. I liked Sax. He is one of my favorite characters.

I think it's reasonable and also responsible for Robinson to include the politics and economics of colonizing Mars. Is it so "socialist" (and why is that a bad thing?) to look at the state of our current multinationals, our sweatshops, our erosion of environmental laws at the pressures exerted by the World Trade Organization, and run that forward into the future a century or more? Science is a human endeavor and as such is not exempt from the subjectivity of its practitioners or the social, political, and economic landscapes in which it is embedded. Science is conversation among peers (besides being a methodology that uses empiricism to understand an objective reality, sure), and I think Robinson shows that well.

Although he does not provide a mechanism for the life-extending treatment, I find this one of the more interesting philosophical cornerstones of his trilogy. What would it mean to extend our lives indefinitely? Greek philosophers argued that it is our mortality that gives our lives meaning. I am still young, everthing interests me, and as such, I find it hard to contemplate the end of my days with any sense of the readiness that I know my grandmother felt at 95. I don't think Robinson explores this issue well enough; perhaps he will in Blue Mars. Before reading the book, I had engaged in a conversation with a friend, in which I was arguing that young people have much more to offer the world than our current model of schooling allows them to, that our current model of schooling infantilizes teens and young adults, some needlessly into their mid-20s (for those who pursue college education and beyond). At that time he recommended the Mars series - but I must say that our conversation was more interesting than what Robinson offers in this regard. He discusses some of the distrust that the first 100 have for the younger generation/s, and annoyance the young (Jackie) have for the older generation, as well as the weariness felt by the older generation...but I think he could explore it more.

I do appreciate the ability of an author to describe the landscape. That seemed to be a common complaint among most reviewers, even those who gave Robinson high marks. I really liked them. I now want to go to Mars (granted it would be different than the books). I took a class in Astrobiology before I graduated with my teacher license - when students in the class gave presentations on terraforming Mars (and my professor was confident it would happen someday), and when I first started reading these books, the idea of leaving my home on earth was repellent to me - the detail Robinson gave about a shortened horizon really threw me as if into a foreign country (and I WAS in a foreign country while reading Green Mars). But he writes about the landscape so beautifully that eventually I was fascinated by the idea seeing it, after all.