The Mars
trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is without a doubt a must for anyone who loves
to read or write about this planet. Certainly it is a huge work from many
points of view.
This first
book focuses on the first colonization of the planet imagined in the very near
future in respect of our present, while the book was written back in 1993. Then
it continues in a time span of several decades describing the beginning of a
terraforming project.
On the one
hand we see the usual optimism of this kind of science fiction to imagine an
event of titanic proportions in a relatively short time, which will certainly
be denied by the facts. Beyond that, you can hardly call this book a novel.
Sure, there are characters and their stories, linked with each other, but from
a narrative point of view it seems more like a series of episodes, shown from
different points of views, giving us a choral narration, in which there isn't a
true protagonist if not Mars itself.
The
individual stories, however, appear to be just an excuse for the author's
attempt to immerse himself in other fields, mostly scientific ones, although he
often tends to lead to sociology, politics, and even psychology. The result is
a book that tends to look more like a speculative treaty than a true novel. The
characters suffer about that, thus ending up in the margins. Most of them are
not making much to be loved. I admit that I had trouble to get fond to them.
The only one I really liked is Frank, maybe because I have found him the most
human one, with his virtues and especially with his flaws. Too bad he was then
hit by the karma of some too politically correct American stories, according to
which, if you do something reprehensible, and at the end you have to pay
somehow.
The book is
still for the most part interesting, especially if you're looking for an
in-depth pseudoscientific study. At the base of speculation there is a very
accurate science, the result of considerable research. Perhaps the worst
problem of this book is to have wanted to exceed in this sense, focusing too
much on technical aspects at the expense of fiction.
In some
parts I got bored and I skipped many pages. I do not regret it. At one point,
in the part of the expedition narrated by the psychologist, the author leaves
for a tangent with a very boring and unnecessary psychological disquisition.
When the scope was more purely scientific, I read it with interest.
One thing
that jars is the desire to be obsessively accurate from a scientific
perspective and then expand without limits into the speculative part, arriving
in my opinion to exceed.
The finale
ends in catastrophism, an argument that I cannot generally stand, not only in
the narrative, leaving you with a bad taste in the mouth, because the mood of
the story starts with an optimistic base to arrive in a crescendo of drama to
an excessive epilogue.
Having to
give an overall opinion, it is undoubtedly a remarkable book, but not an easy
read, due to its complexity and length. Certainly, however, it leaves you with
something.
Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)
on Amazon.com.
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