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Dec 17, 2008

Matt rated it:

I just finished reading this for the second or third time. I wish I could bump this up to 3.5 stars, which more reflects what I feel about it.

To begin with, I should come forward with my biases. This is a book you'll either love or you will hate. For my part, I love the planet Mars. Or at least, I love the idea of the planet Mars, because I've never been there. I'd love to go though. If someone from NASA told me that I could go to Mars, and there was only a 50/50 chance I'd s More...

9 comments like (22 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2011

Charles Dee rated it:

The last long science fiction I read was Dune the year it came out. Then a long period of no science fiction, and in the past year a return to the genre. And one thing I have liked about the mid-century sf I have been reading is its low page count. Most of these guys, and so far I have read only guys, get the story done in under 300 pages. And I really go for the ones that clock in at around 180. There's a good idea, the story moves fast, outrageous things can happen but the story can also be qu More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Apr 27, 2008

Cassie rated it:

I found this book to be intensely frustrating, because I had such a love-hate relationship with it. At one hand, I was fascinated to learn all about the colonization of Mars, the various technologies used, and I really loved seeing what the scientists came up with to develop the planet. Likewise, I enjoyed reading about the experience of exploring the planet's surface and learning about it's unique geography. The landscape descriptions are breathtaking.

It's such a shame that I hated More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Brad rated it:

A long time ago in a city far, far away, the end of a friendship began over a disagreement about Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. D--- was so close to the material, so desperate to relive the nostalgia of the original trilogy, so deeply invested, that when we left the theatre and I expressed not just my frustration but my rage at what I'd seen, he took it as a personal insult. A slag of his taste (or what he thought I must have been declaring was his lack thereof). A debate raged between us for More...

5 comments like (9 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2008

Paxnirvana rated it:

Instead of re-hashing my own old review (did one at Amazon already yanno), let me offer up this BRILLIANT routine about Jaws 4: The Revenge by the late (and lamentedly so!) Mr. Richard Jeni:

"Have you ever seen a movie where they don't even try to have it make sense, they just slap you in the face with how shitty it is? You're sitting there, and you're going, "Maybe this movie isn't so bad and maybe I'm not wasting my life," and the movie slaps you in the face and goes: More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2007

Lobeck rated it:

I debated between a 3 and 4 on this book. The whole time I was reading the series, I was fascinated and bored at the same time. Kim Stanley Robinson gives a very realistic picture of the colonization of Mars beginning with the first hundred scientists, engineers, and other specialists who were selected to live on Mars. Everything from his descriptions of the clouds to his formula for transforming the atmosphere into something breathable are very accurate based on available information, and it More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 09, 2011

James rated it:

A fantastic piece of work - to write this, the author had to have a solid working knowledge of a lot of fields, from cultural anthropology to psychology to astrophysics to chemistry to botany to... I don't know how he does it. And then to take the story and make it flow, weaving all those elements together and creating drama and tension - he's a master.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2010

John rated it:

Almost finished, but it's plain what K.S.R's agenda is; nothing less than making the colonization of Mars happen by sneakily setting the agenda.
Evidence? A lot of "how to" science: how to make oxygen, how to terraform. how to smelt metals, how to genetically manipulate organisms to survive in horrific conditions, even how to build the very structures they live in etc etc etc. For me there was this huge disconnect between the nature of what it might be like to survive in -250C bel More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 18, 2008

Terran rated it:

IT'S SOOOOOOO BIG!!!!! I MEAN, GEEZE YOU GUYS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW AWESOMELY AMAZINGLY OVERWHELMINGLY BIG IT IS!!! THINK OF THE BIGGEST {CLIFF,CANYON,OCEAN,MOUNTAIN,EGO} THAT YOU KNOW OF AND MARS HAS IT EVEN BIGGER THAN THAT! YOU JUST CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE ITS OVERALL BIGNESS!!!!![pant, pant, drool, drool]

Aside from the fawning adulation with which KSR treats our pink neighbor, the plot is just unbelievable. KSR gifts them with nearly magical technology in order to conquer the Red More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2008

Martin rated it:

One of the greatest books about teraforming Mars. Robinson goes beyond the SciFi and goes into social aspects and how political agendas, religion, culture, racism, and just plain bias play in the outcome. There are many important characters and all have background, so character development is long and slow, but well worth it, being that the character of the characters is a big part of the story. This is more a book about the people that happen to be on mars doing a job, than the job they are doi More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 10, 2008

Mykle rated it:

Robinson's Mars trilogy is the worst kind of trilogy: it hooks you with an excellent first book, then drags you through an uneven second book and halfway through a kind of boring third book before you finally scream "ENOUGH! I will no longer particiapte in this trilogistic marketing conspiracy!" (Then you skulk off to watch Star Wars Episode 6, and get even more depressed.)

But Red Mars, the first book, is really wonderful. Like a lot of SF, it gets away with some flaws be More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Anja rated it:

I love Kim Stanley Robinson as an author. He writes very interesting sci-fis about space and exploring the universe but he also ties the book into current day issues (no matter how far in the future it is.) He creates in-depth characters that explore realms of science, religion, and relationships in all of his stories.

Red Mars takes place several decades in the future, around 2040ish (it begins) with Earth slowly collapsing because of population growth and depleting resources U.N. c More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2008

Chadwick rated it:

I usually don't go for super hard sf, but this book totally pwned me. Red Mars is a supremely well thought out imagining of the colonization of Mars, with time and research put in to all of the scientific aspects as well as the cultural facets of transplanting human beings to a truly alien world. I found especially interesting Robinson's consideration of the question, how will Terrans become Martians? How will their minds begin to work differently? How will their metaphors, their standards o More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2007

Hillary rated it:

Since I talk about these books nonstop and everyone around me is tired of hearing about it, I figured it's time to write a review. They are totally, totally good. The premise is that 100 colonists travel to Mars in 2028 (or so) and create a life there... Immigration, transnational corporations, the UN, terraforming, politics, social change, revolution, more revolution, and liberal Martian hippies in low-g ensue, all across the span of 200 years. And since everyone lives a long time thanks to new More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2007

Mike rated it:

This book is the first in a trilogy about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, told (mostly) from the perspectives of the first hundred colonists. It is grand in its scientific scope, but it is also a very human story. There is always something a little bit inspirational about exploring stories, about people who risk it all to learn something new, and this book is really the ultimate.

It starts a mere 30 years in the future, and given that the book is 15 years old, it's more lik More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 13, 2007

Jamie rated it:

An extremely detailed and ridiculously well researched novel on the colonization of Mars, this book is absolutely maddening. The characters veer from believable three dimensional humans to weird caricatures and plot devices within a few pages. And the author's exploration of the political implications of a newly habitable planet filled with resources for civilization is at first fascinating and then just boring. At least five or six times someone would yell out "This isn't like the discover More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2007

C rated it:

It's a very well-written, dense, fascinating book that explores the colonization of Mars from the first settlers, to established cities, to terraforming, and then to revolution. Lots of interesting science; the research alone must have taken years. It's about geography, politics, economics, various hard sciences, psychology, and pretty much everything else. The characters are strong and interesting; Robinson writes from a different perspective in each long chapter. He also gets my Not-Sexist Sea More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Mitch rated it:

Some interesting plot events (the space elevator, its destruction, the interplay between Earth and its "colony", some of the practical concerns about living on Mars [but not bathrooms]) cannot paper over the enormity of this book's mediocrity. Consistently boring word choice, ideas that get argued but not connected, looong descriptions of landscape that add nothing to the story, regular use of the run-on sentence and a general use of 10 words when one will do (JK Rowlings's editor...? More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Jonna added it

My now-husband brought me this book way back when we were dating and I just loved it. I tend to be picky about my science fiction -- I only like it if it's creatively futuristic, fairly feminist, and yet somewhat grounded in reality. But I'm addicted to the reali-topia Robinson creates in this series.

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Jan 15, 2009

Joleen rated it:

This is the opening book to a great series. However, before I hit the last 100 pages I wasn't sure I was even going to finish the book and had no intention of reading the others. There were simply too many characters for me to keep track of and much more detail of the Martian landscape than I what I could digest. Robinson opens with a murder on the red planet itself before jumping back in time to the first human voyage to Mars. Presumably, this was meant to pull the reader into the book befor More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 28, 2008

Eric_W rated it:

Stanley Robinson has written a very interesting series of novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) that speculate about what would happen should Mars be colonized. I have completed only Red Mars so far, but if the others are as intriguing as the first they will be well worth reading. Truly the book is a political treatise as much as an action science fiction novel. As soon as the first ship lands and the colonists begin to build a base they are bifurcated into two factions: those who would p More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Terry rated it:

I liked Red Mars for two main reasons:
1) The characters are well developed. You get to know them in a way that rarely happens in science fiction where characters are much more disposable especially when a narrative spans 40 years. After the first half, I felt able to know what Hiroku, Arkady, John, and Frank would largely do and the deviations from this were well done.

2) The author did his homework and this background improves the experience for the reader. Two cataclysms oc More...

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Dec 11, 2011

Shannon rated it:

Hard science fiction is well known for prioritizing science content above all else. Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is one of the better examples of this predisposition, though that is by no means a bad thing, even if at times the story’s lag is severe.
Red Mars begins its trilogy by telling the story of the initial colonization and terraforming of Mars. It opens with the first hundred settlers building the first settlement on Mars, continues through their various debates to initial terr More...

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Sep 13, 2011

Tom rated it:

Cross posted from my blog at rdmusings.wordpress.com

Red Mars is the first book in a trilogy regarding the colonization of Mars (a rather crowded genre, and yes, I know, another sci-fi book - the next one is not, I swear!). Regularly labeled as literary fiction, his books tend to have strong scientific and ecological backgrounds. For example, his latest work explores the sociological and ecological impact of climate change on the Earth.

In this book, we follow the story of More...

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Aug 08, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

I started out loving this book and flew through it until the last two sections. Then it dragged on and on.

The section with Frank's POV was the worst and when I learned his fate at the end of the book, I wasn't really bothered by it.

On the other hand, my favorite section was the one with John and I wish that there had been more with his POV (and of course hated Frank Chalmers even more after what he did to John Boone). John was definitely my favorite character. I liked Maya during her section but More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Dave rated it:

This book is really too much to absorb in a single reading: much like the characters in the story found, there is simply too much going on at once to be understood. At best, you can only sweep through the main storyline and try to pick up bits and pieces as you go.

Calling this "a story about the colonization of Mars" would be like calling Death Valley hot and dry. Robinson describes, in detail, the first part of the process, from the initial wave of scientists to the first More...

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Jul 11, 2011

Kathleen rated it:

Dense, incredibly ambitious book about the colonization of Mars. I think I'm going to need some time off before I try to read the second book, Green Mars.

While I really enjoyed the hows and whys of the colonization story, I felt my eyes glaze over and I started skimming when I got to the political stuff. Just not my cup of tea. But the whole premise of how the first 100 settlers were chosen, and how they all were really actors pretending to be who they thought the selection committee More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 17, 2011

Nathaniel rated it:

As a matter of principle, I try not to review books that I don't finish. After nearly 300 pages of agony, however, I've decided to make an exception to that rule. I can't finish this book, but I can warn others not to read it. It's the least I can do.

In terms of plot and story, this book isn't *that* bad, and if that's all that was wrong with it I'd give it 2-3 stars. It's the type of sci-fi story that wins awards not because the story is any good, but because of how meticulously r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 24, 2011

Shane rated it:

From a message I sent DJ Strouse:

"I also have a recommendation for you that I've actually been meaning to give for quite awhile.

Read the book "Red Mars" (and the rest of the series if you like it). It is fiction, but it creates the most vivid near-future world that I've ever encountered. It beautifully walks the line between linear projections of the future where everything's the same except for the hovercars, and naive Singularitarian projections which view More...

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Sep 30, 2010

Brian rated it:

An interesting, if not super engaging, book on the initial colonization of Mars. The predictions of future space travel are both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. Optimistic in the sense that we will actually send people to Mars, and pessimistic in the sense that the same old political bullshit comes along too. Throughout the course of the book, transnational companies begin to exert prodigious amounts of power and are starting to become more powerful than many governments. A depress More...

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