Mars has been a subject of science fiction since before the
genre became a fixture: Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Philip K. Dick’s
The Martian Time-slip, Edgar Rice
Burrough’s The Princess of Mars
series, Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sands of
Mars, C.S. Lewis’s Space trilogy, Ben Bova's Mars, and many others have in one way or another
imagined what life might be like on our neighboring globe. Representing more than a decade of research and reading on the subject, Kim Stanley Robinson's 1994 Red Mars is an elaborate work that just may set the bar Mars
colonization novels.
As is to be expected, Red Mars begins with the planet as a wasteland
and moves toward colonization—a very human version, at that. The main characters are introduced on the nine-month space flight from Earth, inter-group tensions set, and then turned loose
on the cold, arid desert. The book
divided into eight sections, a main character is the focus of each, making the
novel a surprisingly character-centered work despite the large amount of
technical and scientific information included and developed.
John Boone is an experienced astronaut—the first to land on Mars, in
fact—and is the expedition’s leader.
Frank Howard is the second in command and secretly harbors feelings of
jealousy regarding not only John’s position of power, but also his charisma and
people skills. Nadia is a tough female
engineer, doing her best with the tools at her disposal to build the
infrastructure and facilities they need to live. Hiroko is an intelligent but unique-minded biologist
with ideas of her own (to say the least) regarding how society should function socially. Not the only rebel, Arkady is an architect
and planner with ideas even more radical regarding the structure and
interaction of people, science, and government on the planet. Through these and a handful of other main
characters Robinson weaves his highly scientific yet intriguingly human tale.
