Kim Stanley Robinson
Green Mars (1993)
Winner of the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Reviewed: 1996-03-04

This middle part of Robinson's grand Mars trilogy, sequel to the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, continues the chronicle of the Red Planet's terraforming, an extraordinary future history using an approach quite different from the conventions of the classic adventure novel most SF is modeled after. There is less of a distinction between good and evil, instead there are many opposing factions, people die, sometimes the wrong people die, and the reader is not fooled into a mistaken belief of omniscience.

Most of the book is taken up by travelogs. People cover long distances on the surface of the planet, by train, by plane or dirigible, even on foot, but mostly by car, and Robinson makes most of the opportunity to detail their impressions. There are seemingly endless portrayals of Martian landscape, geological features, climate, and now also of the changes imposed by the terraforming effort, the sprouting new life, descriptions of algae, mosses, alpine plants. The experience of a whole world, subtly different for each viewer, their perceptions also serving as a tool for personal characterization.

As readers, we follow the Martian history through many facet-like episodes taken from various people's lifes, long stretches of personalized experiences punctuated by sharp bursts of nearly abstract information crucially important for our understanding of the overall picture. We are allowed to watch the further personal development of some of the surviving First Hundred. However, it remains obvious that we can see in detail no more than fragments of all the events that will turn into history.

The general structure of the novel is very similar to that of Red Mars. There are fewer different points of view, or, possibly, they are converging, and there is a palpable sense of direction to the story preparing the ground (quite literally) for Blue Mars, the final part. Green Mars is every bit as good as its predecessor.


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