*** So much politics, so much Mars, but unrealistic
characters
After reading, a few years ago, the first book in the trilogy, “Red Mars”,
I finally found the courage to try my hand at reading “Green Mars”. I’m sorry
to say that, in my opinion, it doesn’t stand comparison with the first one.
As always Robinson is very good in world building, i.e. he can create an
imaginary future on Mars that is very well detailed and credible, thanks to his
vast imagination and a clear thorough research work. And he does so with a
wonderful prose. There are really beautiful passages that deserve to be read
regardless of everything else.
Compared to “Red Mars” I read it all in the sense that I have not
skipped some parts as had happened to me in the first book (the theoretical
disquisitions of psychology, for instance). Since such a book that also has an
informative purpose tends to be plagued by some info-dump, I’ve never felt like
this, perhaps because the author succeeded in better spread his arguments
throughout the text without overloading certain parts, but also because these
are topics that I found most interesting and related to the story. But I admit
that, although I have read everything, I occasionally got distracted in some
passages where in fact nothing happened, but I never lost the thread of the
plot.
Nevertheless I could not make myself like this book. The reason is
simple: I haven’t identified myself with any character. There wasn’t one that
has caught me, and at the same time has maintained a consistent role throughout
the book, as had happened with Frank in “Red Mars”. In this sense the enormous
leaps in time didn’t help; as soon as I found an interesting character (for
example, Arthur), the part abruptly ended and from that point on it became
negligible in the economy of story.
The problem is that this book is not made by the characters and neither
by a well-crafted plot, but it is an attempt to reconstruct a possible
socio-political situation of the future on Mars. The characters, instead of
creating the story, are just puppets, as if it were a non-fiction book.
Within the individual parts, moreover, the pace is so slow that you get
the impression that nothing happens, and when something happens, it is reported
in a manner so as to seem a detached account. Then, moving to the next part,
you discover that so much time has passed and what had a prominent role in the
early part becomes negligible now. As a reader you feel a bit betrayed by this
way of telling, as you tend to project your own feelings, expectations and
emotions on the characters and events, only to discover that it all happened
without you to know and doesn’t matter anymore.
But let’s get to some aspects of the plot.
In the first book there was the possibility of prolonging the life of
the protagonists with some treatments. It is a narrative device that allows to
use the same characters for a longer period of time. The problem is that in
this second book you find out that the treatments let them live indefinitely.
The very idea that the characters don’t have some time reference to measure
their life is quite disturbing and contributes to put some distance from them.
One wonders what the purpose of life of these people is.
In reading this book it would seem that all the characters are only
interested in the situation of Mars (terraforming, independence from the
Earth), i.e. everything turns around some big issues, so that it seems that
they don’t have a real life, made of small things. The small elements that
define the humanity of people are missing. And, when there are some, they are
narrated in a didactic way, as if they were secondary. But for real people
their own purposes are all that really counts. As much as one can devote to a
cause, this cause must come after, otherwise the person becomes a potentially
dangerous fanatic. Sure, there are fanatics on Mars too (and indeed some are
described as such), but it is not credible that all are like this. In fact, the
characters don’t seem real people.
As for the scientific aspect, despite the obvious research done by the
author, I have the impression that the process of terraforming described
happens a bit too fast and the conditions to accelerate it are too easily
created. But this is a minor problem, since it could be a license taken by the
author to bring the plot in a certain direction. Besides, it is a trilogy about
the terraforming of Mars. It must be said that the partially terraformed Mars,
described in this book, in my eyes has lost the charm it had in the first book.
Finally, I hadn’t appreciated the catastrophism at the end of the
previous book. We get something similar here, but not as much dramatic. But,
while in “Red Mars” the catastrophic event determined the climax of the story
and then had his narrative purpose, the tension in “Green Mars” remains low for
most of the novel and fails towards the ending to increase as it should.
In short, once I reached the last page, the only word that came to my
mind, exhausted by a heavy reading to say the least, was: finally!
Green Mars
on Amazon.
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