Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars
Well, that’s three…
Red Mars then
Fantastic trilogy. Got me so jazzed up that I used it as a jumping off point for research into my pre-thesis work at architecture school.
Highly recommended for it’s hard sci-fi backbone. Also it’s the first story (that I know of, and correct me if I’m wrong) that really deals with the implications of establishing a human presence on another world. Politics, culture, social questions have to be re-examined, i.e. will they still be valid on Mars? Does it require a new set of Martian values, norms, etc.
As an aside - Now that I’m thinking about it, Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, is another example of a novel trying to understand what it is to be human as a martian colonist.
Back to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy - one of the aspects of this story involve enviromental issues. Two of the main characters will embody 2 different view points on how to deal with human influence on what essentially is (to our point of view) tabula rasa. To me this was the hook that really began to draw me into the novel(s). I’ve always had this preconceived notion that new worlds could (must?) be terraformed to suite our needs in order for us to viably colonise them. In this story, it does question that assumption. Do we make the planet suite us or the other way around? What does it mean to think of one’s self as being “Martian”? From there, the political, cultural, social, human identity issues seem to click into place as things to consider.
Definitely a must have or a must read. It is 3 books that literally span a couple hundred years. Red Mars - deals with getting there and initial establishment. The other two books looks into the points I brought up in the above preceding paragraphs. It might seem slow to start as it has to introduce a lot of characters - there are 100 initial colonists. Although not all of them share the limelight, there are quite a few of them with major roles that will influence the story all the way through to Book 3: Green Mars.
Don’t mistake these books as being too wonkish either. The characters are well written (I think) and their relationships to each other and to their “causes” have interesting turns. There’s drama as you see the original 100 colonists develope factions that align or clash with each other. There’s tragedy as they come into conflict with each other and with subsequent new groupings of colonists. Not all will make it to the end including some characters that I had become vested in. Say… kinda like BSG… ('cept BSG hasn’t quite ended yet)
Anyway, I ramble. Sorry. Good set of books. Great ideas to consider. To start, obviously, I’ll say start with Book 1: Red Mars.
Yea, it was hard sci-fi. I likes me the hard sci-fi 
The story that went along with the hard sci-fi elements was ok. Most of it seemed kind of tacked on to give key scenes some glue to hold them together. The three books almost would have worked better as a series of short stories highlighting the key points in time.