Зеленият Марс

After the failed, bloody, chaotic revolution of 2061 on Mars, led by the first hundred settlers, ( less than half now) they laid low for decades, deep inside the frozen, hidden, ice sanctuaries near the greatly underpopulated south polar region, of the Red Planet regrouping, living humbly and quietly , awaiting for the opportunity to strike a second blow, for independence. Time marches on, the heavenly body recovers slowly, the "natives ," become restless again and with the "Treatment", life is [...]

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and beca [...]

KSR has been described as writing philosophical sci-fi novels of suspense. To me his philosophical questioning in Green Mars goes as deep as Valles Marineris. This trilogy is about answering the question "how do we live together when we have no home." A similar sci-fi treatment, Battlestar Galactica, attempted to answer this--but KSR plays with the question without any heavy-handed mysticism, magic, or deus-ex-machinas. In other words, "how do we live together" can only be answered within the bo [...]

One of the chapters of Green Mars is called Long Runout. I think it would make a good subtitle for this book. Be prepared to spend dozens of pages reading about our protagonists driving around Mars. Just driving, driving and thinking, sometimes getting out and walking around. I swear if they get into that Rock-Mobile one more time! At times a labor to read. I enjoy the wonderful detail of science and speculation and nothing pleases me more than when an character goes on a rant about a concept. I [...]

“Technically he weighed about forty kilos, but as he walked along it felt more like five. Very strange, even unpleasant. Like walking on buttered glass.”This is my favorite feature of hard science fiction, the little minutiae that make the imaginary scenes not merely believable but also visceral; more vivid to me than riding on a dragon’s back and such. I like Kim Stanley Robinson’s conception of a Mars in the process of terraformation where global warming is actually a good thing!Green [...]

izbgr/maxW500/64913733If you liked 'Red Mars' a lot, and read it with sheer pleasure - then you should definitely go ahead and read 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars.'If however, like me, you found 'Red Mars' to have some very interesting idea and details, and appreciated Kim Stanley Robinson's research into a broad range of fields for his epic dissertation on the possible ramifications of terraforming a planet, but ultimately found the experience of reading the novel akin to studying a somewhat-borin [...]

I'd like to rate it higher, but it's too didactic. Too preachy. In many places, just plain boring.Sort of an SF The Silmarillion—for better or worse. A great narrative story and in Robinson's case a firm scientific aura, but too many data dumps and too much historical narrative. The plots are good, but are slighted by the science and "history." And it's all too easy.The cast is too large and sound too much alike.Too many key points are made with little thought or reflection.Interestingly, he p [...]

For me, this trilogy is one of those life-changing books - something you talk about, and think about years later. If we ever go to Mars - this is the way it should be done. For those of you not familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson, his science is so grounded in real, hard, current science - it's called future history. For those of you scared of sci-fi being too boring - much like that physics class you hated - relax. Robinson gives you the basic idea, without pages to describe just how a particula [...]

Someone said if God wrote, he'd write like Tolstoy. That really depends what he's interested in! And reading what God wrote depends on what you're interested in. Unrest amongst 19th century Russian farmers? Ahahah—Anna Karenina is rubbish.If God wrote about the colonisation of Mars, its long process, the terraforming, the space elevator construction, the asteroid mining, the religious upset, the marring of science by the oligarchical companies that back the scientists, the struggles of Martian [...]

If I remember my review of Red Mars correctly, I spent much of my time wondering why we weren't spending time with what seemed the most interesting parts of the story - Hiroko's hidden colony and the rebels. Apparently I just need to be a little more patient, but that's never been my strong point. Green Mars is almost entirely from outside the official corporate structures of power, and spends most of its time with Hiroko's colony and the rebels, as they try to reconcile vastly different goals a [...]

Este libro es como un dulce metido en una caja fuerte en la jaula de un oso hambriento. Me explico, que ya estoy viendo vuestras caras de: "¿Pero qué c***?"El dulce es la historia. Atractiva, sugerente y apetecible. ¿Quién no quiere leer una historia sobre los primeros colonos de Marte y su terraformación?La caja fuerte son los personajes. Todos muy planos que no me han causado empatía ninguna. Están ahí como simples herramientas para contar una historia. Son un impedimento para comerme [...]

Terraformar… o no terraformar. Esa es la cuestión. O mejor dicho, ¿Cómo?Bueno allá vamos… Me da un poco de respeto escribir una review de este libro (de hecho estaba apunto de no hacerla), porqué no creo que sea muy crítica. En realidad le doy un 3.5/5. (¿ cuando podremos poner medias estrellas?)La Trilogía de Marte (Marte Verde es el segundo volumen), no es solo ciencia ficción sino también es sociología, ciencia y sobre todo política. Es la historia de Marte, de la terraformaci [...]

Even more technical than the previous part, this second one focuses more on ecology, economics and politics. Lead by those remained from the First Hundred, ~ 50 yrs after the events in Red Mars, the Martians (4 generations by now) try to gain independence while Earth is in chaos. Second revolution is in progress and old fears surface once again.The amount of research for this book is simply overwhelming. The only other time when I was in such awe, concerning the dedication for details and inform [...]

‘Green Mars’ is a novel which kept challenging my expectations, and then surpassing them. If you’d told me that I’d find a long section of a science fiction novel – dealing with a conference arguing what form a new Martian government would take – truly gripping, I would never have believed you. It would have sounded like some nightmare episode of ‘Star Trek’ where Kirk and Spock sit around with some warring ambassadors and long passionate speeches are made and William Shatner ove [...]

The nice thing about giving your characters longevity treatments is that you can keep the same bunch of characters throughout your epic series, no matter how long the time span. It’s like having a bunch of Gandalfs running around.And in Green Mars, this really is the case. Out of the first one hundred Terran scientists to colonize Mars, a small fraction has survived the previous century of hardship, revolution, and each other (no small feat, because they are all crazy!). But that small fractio [...]

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, although the beginning was a little slow going for me. Where Red Mars started well and then slowed down at the end, this book was the other way around. I have found in this series, the less time the characters spend in some kind of vehicle traveling across Mars, the more I enjoyed the story. Those parts get bogged down with too much detail.If you read the description on the back cover of the book and think that you are going to see lots of POVs from the next gene [...]

Every bit as good as Red Mars was - this is a huge epic story, vivid and arresting; this trilogy, so far, is up there with the best of Frank Herbert. I'm looking forward to the third book, but at the same time not wanting it to be over that soon. This series cries out to be made into a trilogy of films, too.

This review was written in the late nineties (just for myself), and it was buried in amongst my things until today, when I uncovered the journal it was written in. I have transcribed it verbatim from all those years ago (although square brackets indicate some additional information for the sake of readability). It is one of my lost reviews.It's been a tendency of the good Science Fiction I've read to improve with the sequel -- Green Mars fits in with this just fine. As with something like Empire [...]

nwhytevejournal/1541312mlI think the Mars books are among the best examples of sfnal world-building, combined with politics, that I know; without needing a detailed knowledge of Martian geography in advance (the maps supplied are adequate for me) I got a tremendous sense of the scale and size of the planet, of the vast enterprise of making it livable, not a new Earth, but a new Mars. And Robinson raises questions about the political management of the environment and the wider economy on the new [...]

Green Mars, the second book in the Mars trilogy, is set nearly a generation after Red Mars. It won the Hugo Award in 1994 and was nominated for the Nebula. in Like Red Mars, the book is broken into 10 parts that mostly follow a single POV. The book starts with a perspective from the the younger generation of colonists - Nirgal, one of Hiroko’s children - and continues with a character newly arrived from Earth, Art Randolph, who is sent by the corporation Praxis to learn about the Martian under [...]

"The point is not to make another Earth. Not another Alaska or Tibet, not a Vermont or a Venice, not even another Antarctica. The point is to make something new and strange, something Martian." - Opening lines of Green MarsKim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is one of the greatest achievements in science fiction. Maybe this is an exaggeration, maybe I'll change my mind when I get to Blue Mars, or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Whatever. Robinson produced something great here: a blend [...]

This series is amazing and eerily relevant to the modern occurrences. Things like the manned mission to Mars, with a selection process eerily similar to the one in this series, and multinational corporations grip on our political system, makes this a culturally relevant read.The Mars series, with all it's science that's so plausible, could easily be a prediction of whats to come and a basis for future colonization of Mars. That's both it's greatest attribute and it's biggest flaw. The attention [...]

On the whole I think Green Mars is not quite as good and Red Mars. I feel that Robinson tried to put too much information and too much very rapid change in the already compressed time-scale of the series. That being said, the attractions of the first novel are still present in this book. Robinson's vision of the colonization of Mars in frighteningly plausible in some respects and very well thought through. Despite the huge challenges being faced by the characters, there is a sense of optimism ab [...]

With a deeper understanding of the characters my first annoyances with "Red Mars" were not present in "Green Mars." Riveting and exquisitely researched, Robinson presents a realistic model of loss and triumph for an emerging governance.For those who have read the novel: (SPOILER ALERT, PLEASE DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK YET) I find the depiction of Maya and her (probable) daughter, Jackie, intriguing. While Maya is debating her role in setting to leading men against one anoth [...]

The penultimate trilogy about the colonization of mars, Robinson's "Red Mars," "Green Mars," and "Blue Mars" trilogy is the most stirring and character-driven science fiction I've yet to read, ever. The science is very solid, and in layman's terms often enough to keep even the most science dense of us (myself included) up to speed. The politics are as complicated as one would imagine, and the psychology and sociology of an evolving terraformed Mars is just stupendous!

This was hard to chew through compared to the first book of the series. The descriptive narrative was repetitive and unspectacular. The original characters were developed further, although with an underlying feeling of inevitability. The new younger characters lacked dimension. I'm glad I read it, although I'm not inspired to read the final book of the series. Should I?

Wonderful! Review to come :)

Uz dužno poštovanje prema Kimu, utušio me poprilično. Radnja teče toliko sporo da je jedino s čime mogu usporediti brzinu npr. pomicanje tektonskih ploča JAkoooo jakoooo sporo. Toliko opisuje da odlazi u krajnost toliko da možemo naći i kako se likovi bude, spavaju, idu u wc itdMarsološki je opet to na vrhunskoj razini i tome se nema što reći. No, ovako dosadnu knjigu dugo nisam čitao. Sad strahujem pred Plavim Marsom.Crveni Mars je barem deset dužina ispred ove knjige! Zeleni Mars [...]

Eh. After the rich personal relationships that were carved out in Red Mars, this one was a bit of a letdown. It focused more on geology, biology, and general politicing that seem to be the modern focal point of anything to do with Mars in sci-fi (see Ben bovas work if you doubt this)All in all the people felt mechanical, the science felt forced and disinteresting I have already stockpiled BLue Mars and Martians, so I will probly see this set through, but if you read Red Mars and are lukewarm abo [...]

It starts off promisingly enough. A number of the lesser characters from Red Mars become more developed, the descriptions of the underworld life on Mars are frequently fascinating, and there are wonderfully strange scenes such as the village of statues. But it gets bogged down in talking, and the second half starts dragging and the pace never picks up again. At some point it turned from being an interesting read to a chore.