This final instalment of the Mars trilogy was published in 1996, which makes it all the more audacious and impressive that Kim Stanley Robinson thoroughly dismisses globalised capitalism as unstable and archaic. In ‘Blue Mars’, he evokes a postcapitalist Martian economy consisting of co-ops, universal basic income, and gifting. By this point in the trilogy, the reader know what to expect: a narrative focused not on big dramatic events, but on environmental change, scientific discovery, and political minutiae. A detailed tapestry of world-building, rather than a plot-led thriller. If [b:Green Mars|77505|Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2)|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389628152l/77505._SY75_.jpg|69059] meanders slowly around the planet, displaying its beauties to the reader, so does this finale. As I knew what to expect, and what not to, I found ‘Blue Mars’ a magnificent conclusion and a truly involving vision of the future. The characters served predominantly as viewpoints, although they also had distinctive individual voices. They were drowned out by Mars itself, however, and that was more to my taste than perhaps it would be to some. I was blown away by the sheer intellectual rigor of the book. It swept me into a hopeful, convincing future. At the present moment of climate crisis, political breakdown, and cultural conflict, that felt like a wonderful gift. Notably, in the 22nd century evoked here Earth remains in the Holocene and sea level rise is not explicitly linked to global warming.

Kim Stanley Robinson fills nearly 800 pages without very much plot by closely exploring a series of themes, without coming to any simple conclusions. I got the impression of plot being something that occurs in the background while you’re living your life – even if you’re among the First Hundred, the famous initial settlers on Mars. Through their eyes, the reader considers mythology (little red men; Hiroko), political power (hard; soft; interplanetary; inherited), memory (as identity; mutability; danger), science (string theory; interplanetary travel; longevity; terraforming), and constitutional law (democratic accountability; ensuring participation; role of the legislature).

The contrasts between generations are particularly vivid, and these shed light on a particularly big question: once humanity has ended the struggle for subsistence, expanded our lifespan, and gained unprecedented freedom, how then do we occupy ourselves? The remaining First Hundred, mostly scientists, continue to pursue knowledge and concern themselves with the future of Mars. They find it hard to escape the past, especially Ann. The generation below them, however, has inherited little of their anxiety. Nirgal and Zo throw themselves into intense experiences, such as orgies and extreme sports. They are sensualists, pushing their bodies to find better pleasures. Nirgal’s ultramarathon around the entirety of Mars and Zo’s flying are thrilling sequences to read. For once in my life, I even found a scene of organised sports compelling. The Martian equivalent of the Olympics did not separate competitors by gender and, thanks to lower gravity, the long jump and pole vault reached spectacular distances. Most importantly, the whole thing was suffused with joy, rather than sheer competitiveness. As the book proceeds, the First Hundred find paths through life beyond their sense of duty to Mars. Members of both generations, and subsequent immigrants, try going back to the land. Mars could be flippantly described as having Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism, as industry does not require humans to do anything except instruct AIs. Food cultivation, however, is tied into terraforming and therefore takes on great importance. The chapter in which Nirgal finds a little corner to cultivate illustrates the highs and lows of this especially well.

Further illumination is cast on Mars by comparisons with other planets. As technology facilitates travel and colonisation within the solar system, Martians visit their neighbours. An extended visit to Earth features casual racism on the bedraggled Norfolk coast (which rang true – I grew up not far away from there). Earth’s population pressure creates demands for Mars to take more immigrants, a debate that continues throughout the book. As ever, there are no easy answers. A meaningful proportion of Earth’s 15 billion cannot be accommodated on Mars, as it still lacks a full atmosphere. Yet the concept of carrying capacity is a fraught one. As you might expect, the political argument on Mars is less about physical resources and more about cultural assimilation. The ending makes it clear that the successful approach is radical, peaceful acceptance; to welcome the newcomers and what they bring to Mars. Again, this is a wonderfully hopeful thing to read in 2019.

Later in the book, Martians also visit Uranus and Mercury, both of which are much more challenging to occupy than Mars. Uranus has very low gravity and little heat. Mercury is more hostile still and I love the ingenious solution Kim Stanley Robinson comes up with. As the planet rotates, the side facing the sun is uninhabitably hot and the sun facing away from it uninhabitably cold. So Mercury has a city on tracks, which moves constantly so as to stay in the narrow liveable strip at the edge, constantly chasing sunset. There’s a wonderful scene in which Zo convinces a drunk friend to venture out onto the city's tracks with her. As with many other scenes, the reader observes characters with very little risk in their lives deliberately putting themselves in physical peril just for kicks. Or in some cases, simply not thinking through risks despite their undoubted intelligence. The scene in which Ann gets chased by a polar bear stands out in this respect. Not only is it lovely to imagine polar bears roaming the icy Martian wastes, the sequence also shows how humans can profoundly change their environment without controlling it or making it safe. The many beautiful descriptions of Martian landscapes display a great respect for wildness. While some characters deplore the interference of terraforming (another debate that continues throughout), it is clear that ecopoesis need not be anthropocentric as such. While the aim is to create an atmosphere that humans can breathe, there are many ways this be done. The choices made on Mars prioritise biodiversity, rather than a sterile environment manufactured just for humans.

Each volume of the Mars trilogy features a revolution on Mars and each successive book ostensibly gives it less space in the narrative. The way I saw it, Kim Stanley Robinson was showing the exponential increase in social complexity as a human population rises. In [b:Red Mars|77507|Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440699787l/77507._SY75_.jpg|40712], the planet has hundreds of inhabitants, in [b:Green Mars|77505|Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2)|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389628152l/77505._SY75_.jpg|69059] thousands, and in ‘Blue Mars’ millions. Thus the mechanisms of social change in a decentralised world become harder to personify and isolate in a few leaders. ‘Blue Mars’ depicts the conditions that create the final revolution, rather than centring it on a small cast of revolutionaries. Moreover, each revolution is less violent and convulsive than the last, another deeply hopeful perspective. Much as I love the content of the Mars trilogy, though, two thousand pages would definitely drag were Kim Stanley Robinson not such a skilful writer. These two quotes demonstrate the distinctive perspectives he gives to his characters. First, Sax:

He wandered over tundra moss and samphire, kedge and grass. Life on Mars. An odd business. Life anywhere, really. Not at all obvious that it should appear. This was something Sax had been thinking about recently. Why was there increasing order in any part of the cosmos, when one might expect nothing but entropy everywhere? This puzzled him greatly. He had been intrigued when Spencer had offered an offhand explanation, over beer one night on the Odessa corniche – in an expanding universe, Spencer had said, order was not really order, but merely the difference between the actual entropy exhibited and the maximum entropy possible. This difference was what humans perceived as order. Sax had been surprised to hear such an interesting cosmological notion from Spencer, but Spencer was a surprising man. Although he drank too much alcohol.

Lying on the grass looking at tundra flowers, one couldn’t help thinking about life. In the sunlight the little flowers stood on their stems glowing with their anthracyins, dense with colour. Ideograms of order. They did not look like a mere difference in entropic levels. Such a fine texture to a flower petal; drenched in light; it was almost as if it were visible molecule by molecule: there a white molecule, there a lavender, there clematis blue. These pointillist dots were not molecules, of course, which were way below visible resolution. And even if molecules had been visible, the ultimate building blocks of the petal were so much smaller that they were hard to imagine – finer than one’s conceptual resolution, one might say.

Second, Maya:

And then the feeling came over her again, the pre-epileptic aura of the presque vu, the sea glittering, a vast significance suffusing everything, immanent everywhere but just beyond reach, pressing in on things – and with a little pop she got it – that that very aspect of the phenomenon was itself the meaning – that the significance of everything always lay just out of reach, in the future, tugging them forward – that in special moments one felt this tidal tug of becoming as a sensation of sharp, happy anticipation, as she had when looking down at Mars from the Ares, the unconscious mind filled not with the detritus of a dead past but with the unforeseeable possibilities of the live future, ah, yes – anything could happen, anything, anything. And so as the presque vu washed slowly away from her, unseen and yet somehow this time comprehended, she sat back on the bench, full and glowing; here she was, after all, and the potential for happiness would always be in her.

( )

This book felt like it took forever to get through. I loved the first book in the series. It was a great concept. And I loved that the following two books continued, following many of the original characters over almost 200 years of colonizing and transforming Mars.

What I did not like was the constant meandering and rambling that happens. The author often goes into several pages of explanation for something like how memory engrams work or how tidal action works. Some parts feel like you're reading an encyclopedia. I was often left unsure as to what the main story was supposed to be about.

It's a shame, as the book has some wonderful imagination in it. The city on Mercury. The asteroid colonies, the base on Miranda. We get a glimpse of all of those. But, by the time I got to the end, I couldn't wait for the book to end. ( )

I found this to be the best of the three books in the series. Like the other two, it's very long and requires some patience to get through, as the pace varies a lot from some short bursts of action and some much longer philosophical reflections on life, society, politics and environmental issues. What was particularly interesting (and unique to this volume) was a visit back to Earth by some of the characters, including NIrgal, who was Martian-born and so had never experienced Earth before. The description of a post-flood Earth with all its changed landscapes and adaptations was fascinating, as was the description of what the unfamiliar gravity, atmosphere and environment would do to someone not used to those conditions, There were a larger number of shorter chapters in the book, which seemed to make the reading easier!
Overall, a great work of imagination, and scarily predictive of where we are now in terms of increasing concern about environmental impacts and Earth's resources (not to mention SpaceX!) ( )

This book is too long and boring for me. It's not to say that there aren't good moments, there are, but mostly in the final third of the book. It took me more than a month to read it, because I was so bored.
Still, as it happens with other stories told in several books, it is at the very end that you realize the whole story that's been told to you. It is a very satisfying story of the colonization and terraforming of mars in 200 years. All in all, they are good books, but they would be more appealing to a wider audience if each book was shorter, at least 100 pages shorter. As it stands, i understand that it can only appeal to hard sci-fi fans.
I will read more books by the author. ( )

I guess this is intended to wrap things up somehow. I think it got a bit more evanescent than I can properly process. I think it was in Green Mars that we heard a lot about Nirgal's vision of green and white, some kind of alchemical fusion thing. Here it's more green and red, Sax and Ann. I can get with that a bit. I am preoccupied with philosophy of science. Science is surely some kind of disciplined engagement with the world. The most basic polarity would be perception and action. Ann would be the passive perceptive appreciative pole; Sax is the active controlling creative pole. But these two poles can't work in isolation, they have to marry. Well, get in bed together anyway!

So maybe that does wrap the whole trilogy up, tie together the major themes and tensions. ( )

Same as Green Mars. The three are really one looong epic. ( )

I find it amusing that ~20 years after having read this trilogy, I remembered all the parts about terraforming, and the longevity treatment, and the memory issues, even the freaking birdsuits, but nothing about the politics. On re-reading, I'd say the political aspect was the most interesting this time around. Probably because I'm older, and things are kinda forked up in the US right now, so that's of interest.

Some aspects of this trilogy are just products of the 90's. If this book had been written 10-15 years later, they would have been harvesting graphene instead of buckyballs. In fact, probably all of Mars would have been built with graphene. 🤣 Things like faxes, and people still call each other, and there's clearly no Internet. OK those I can understand because I lived in the 90s and remember life before the Internet. But what I don't buy is people taking drugs (omegendorph, pandorph, whippits) like there's no tomorrow and apparently never suffer addiction or side effects. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Things I didn't love about the triology this time around:
- Maya and Jackie. Why in the 22nd century are strong women still pitting against each other and calling each other sluts? Come on.
- Nadia saying she doesn't want kids, and the next page has a daughter. This is the same mentality that has annoying men constantly telling me I'm going to "change my mind" about not having kids. If a woman doesn't want to have kids, let's let her not have kids OK? Can't we have that in our utopian future?
- Speaking of having kids. This whole book is all about the one child policy, and clearly has no idea how repressive that is for women. Can we solve the problems of the hypermalthusian age without resorting to legislating people's bodies?
- Sax and Ann. The whole thing. He basically stalks her for 200 years, and wants her to absolve him of his sins. And then she does? He forces a medical treatment on her against her will, and doesn't leave her alone? That's just gross.
- I wish we could have spent more time thinking about the EPIC amounts of ennui that kids who grow up in a utopia and can expect to live basically forever are going to have. I think this was sort of hinted on with Zo but that didn't go very far. ( )

I finished it, but only because I was sort of interested in some of the characters, and I like to finish things - probably should have written this series off a few chapters into book two. I repeatedly skipped tens of pages of random descriptions of people looking at the world, and thinking about their lives, with a little political or economic nihilism / utopianism thrown in. Very few things actually happen, and characters don't even communicate that much.

The description of the development of futuristic technologies is also ... well, I would call it technobabble. I understand it is science fiction, and some of hand waving is always there - it's the future, we don't know about it yet. But no reason to spend dozens of pages describing the process of developing the next memory treatment, when we all know that it is imaginary.

( )

Very little happens in this final part, mostly existential angst, flying and recreational gangbanging. A bit too kumbayah for me and doesn't go into any detail to justify it. ( )

One of the great SF series of all time! I agree with Arthur C. Clarke when he said, "It should be required reading for the colonists of the next century." Rarely has a colonization story been realized with such realism - of personalities, of politics, of culture, and of science. ( )

This one is...dense. But a fitting end to a truly epic saga ( )

The first two novels in the Mars trilogy were pretty much a tight mix of colonization, politics, SO MUCH GREAT SCIENCE, and fairly interesting characterizations pretty much designed to carry the sprawling expanse of what MARS is more than anything else.

Let's put it this way, and careful, because here comes a spoiler, but...

Mars is the main character. :)

The third novel has relatively little action in it, but that's okay.

There's a new constitution being hammered out for the fascinating experimental political parts, new customs as both time and the planet changes radically with the terraforming, and the influence Mars has on a massively overpopulated Earth being driven crazy by the new life-prolonging treatments. (Designed and exported from Mars.)

I squealed like a little fanboy with the endless wordcount of the science, from the physics of brain chemistry at the quantum level to the terraforming of Mercury and Venus and some of the bigger moons out by the gassy ones. :)

What COULD be considered a negative to the novel was actually its biggest strength. Let me explain...

This is about old people. Senescence. You could take it as a metaphor if you like, Old Blue Earth vs New Mars, memories versus living in the present, or even White versus Red thinking (It's a Thing).

It's also about synthesis. As in alchemy. Mars is both its pristine red past and its new living, ocean-filled, green, boat laden glory. So are we. We're our memories, our hopes for the future, be it science, children, or ourselves, AND we are our present. Live your life, quick, the promise of immortality is an illusion. :)

I will never call this novel a great one in terms of plot or characters, though I really grew to love Sax and Ann, our embodiments of White and Red thinking, by the end. Everyone else, nascent gods supplanting their titan parents, were amusing and fascinating, but in the end, unnecessary... EXCEPT for the character of world-building, science, the collective unconscious, the zeitgeist, the evolving thought, and the evolving planet.

It's a sprawling jazz-filled explosion of life and erosion of time, water, and memory.

At least, that's how I see it. :)

If this novel had been presented today as a Hugo winner, I probably would have declined to nominate it, but for the time this won in '97, as well as the other two Mars novels, it was a revelation.

Most other SF is weaksauce compared to the science and exploration of science in these novels. Truth is truth. All this glorious science doesn't always make for a good STORY, but the story was good enough to showcase a polymath brilliance spanning ethics, psychology, politics, terraforming, biology, quantum physics, and even the meaning of life.

Come on. CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. :) :) :) ( )

An impressive conclusion to the series. This book focuses much more on the politics and relationships between the characters, as well as between the planets and societies. Its definitely the most political of the three and, from my perspective, the most interesting. ( )

The third book in the Mars Trilogy.

I found this book more satisfying than the second, but still didn't make the impact on me as the first book did. In Blue Mars we get a good swag of "hard science" on how the colonisation of Mars and associated terraforming served as a launch-pad (no pun intended) for the colonisation of the rest fo the solar system and beyond.

We also get a great view into how different gravity & environment of Mars might effect the biology of the settlers and their children as well as the culture and politics of the society, especially in regards those not from Earth, who over time become the majority and influence any new settlers. In addition, some great insight is offered on the effects on the body, mind and social relations that might come about with prolongation of life.

The science aspects make the book a fascinating read , but also the author winds up the trilogy in a satisfactory manner. Although there is many tragedies and dark parts to the story it ends in a hopeful conclusion which I found not only satisfying but also underlined the bigger story of the endeavour of the whole colonising saga (which throughout the telling was often not sure of happening as the realism of this story-telling often made one think that the outcome may be not so positive). ( )

Too much politics and not enough science for my tastes. ( )

The Martians live long as the planet changes drastically becoming a utopia as Earth gets more and more crowded. There are ever more amazing technologies and landscapes. In the end I realized that the believability was strained because I have less faith in human intelligence than the author does. In the end the trilogy was a good ride.(December 13, 2005) ( )

This should be Elon Musk's strategy guide to colonizing Mars. It's that detailed, science-based and fascinating. ( )

With Blue Mars, the author could easily have chosen to embroil its plot in civil war and strife among various Martian factions battling for control. What he opts for instead is something much more complex and hopeful: the working through of compromise and negotiation between opposing viewpoints that it takes a minor miracle to put in the same room together, let alone achieve any kind of lasting, workable agreement among. This is the far more difficult story to tell with any credibility, and the more rewarding one to read. There's less action this way, but some of this novel's greatest moments are the quiet ones in which characters reflect on trends and outcomes as they take stock of their surroundings, on Mars, on Earth and elsewhere.

The entire trilogy has been a wrestling between views that cannot all achieve their vision. The author proved he can move the story to any character's perspective on this problem and bring me to believe in that person's viewpoint. As much as I side with the terraformers and ultimately rooted for them, consequently I can appreciate the other views that were shared. My greatest frustrations are with the characters who can't or won't share this empathy (especially Jackie and Zo).

To my mind, the focus was always on characters' positions along the political spectrum rather than their individual stories, more geared toward exploring approaches and ideas for our future than moving its characters through a plot. I saw them primarily as symbols or little more than a thin fictional lens through which to explore how the settling of other worlds might play out. But I was surprised by how much I came to care about these characters after all. Even without intricate plots laid out for them, they led realistic lives with confusions, hopes and loves that I could relate to. And this ending gets so many things right.

The Mars Trilogy offers no simple solutions to complex problems. Instead it dives fearlessly headlong into that complexity, exploring all the layers. It comes up for air to provide the glimpse of a possible future that will never shed that complexity but one that doesn't have to end in chaos, anger and mutual destruction. ( )

Recall enjoying the consideration of some of the social changes that may occur as humanity is split across planets. ( )

I lived with this series for a while: in the end, from my perspective, the Mars stuff was a pretext for the sociology, and the sociology was a pretext for something more powerful: exploring what it might be like to outlive yourself and how we might cope with an emergent utopia. And lots of sentimental moments, but that was okay, because I grew fond of these characters. And lush writing of the geology and geography, and visions of areoforming and areophany. Too much of it, of course, as with nine out of ten SF series, but I don't feel bad about indulging him. ( )

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6491373312/h0736E790/

If 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-boring textbook, then you should probably skip these two sequels.

Unless, of course, like me, you have committed yourself to reading all the Hugo and Nebula award winners, in which case you will just have to go ahead and read them.

Basically, 'Blue' and 'Green Mars' are a lot more of the same, but with even more soap-opera-ish drama thrown in. The characters still exist wholly in service to the ideas/concepts of the book (and some get dropped unceremoniously by the wayside after having served their purpose, which makes the narrative structure feel a bit amorphous.)

Honestly, I found these sequels a slog. However, they did win awards, and other people obviously love them... ( )

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - very good

I read Red Mars and Green Mars so long ago now (possibly when they came out) and kept saving this one for a time when I could pay it my full attention. That did put me at a slight disadvantage for a chapter or two whilst I got back into the rhythym of the plot and the characters, but was soon immersed back into the
plot.

I'm not going to try and condense the plot of all the books (they're around the 700 page mark), but Earth is overcrowded and headed for self destruction. They send a ship forth to Mars with a group of colonists to see if they can sustain a new life on a new world. They get termed 'The First Hundred' and all the books revolve around them. The first book is mostly about them settling on Mars and starting to build a new life and colony. Then we get onto the start of the Terraforming, the schisms in ideology, the addition of new settlers and the first of the children to be born there. Really, we're talking soap opera in space with the addition of some fairly weighty but interesting science. Underpinning it all is the
authors Eco-credentials and his dream of a utopia - his vision of Mars as a new start where everyone is equal and all the petty squabbles of earth are left behind.

The scariest thing about these books is how close we seem to be on the path to destruction that he's outlining - the trilogy was written in the 1990's - with the changes in our weather and the population movement that is already underway. I loved these three books and I'm told they're his best works. I went to #EdBookTweetUp2 on Monday and was discussing this with another fan - he'd read some other of KSR's books and not been quite so taken with them, but also loved the Mars Trilogy. Will see for myself soon as I have another of his books on Mount TBR!
( )

I really enjoyed the scope of the concepts in this book. The depth with which KSR gets into the project of shaping the climate of a whole planet is impressive. A lot of fun and I can't wait to get to the sequel! ( )

Since Blue Mars is the third volume of a trilogy, I'll start with some remarks about the whole set, now that I have it in complete view. These books are an account of the settlement and terraforming of Mars, along with the areoformation (marsifying, that is) of human politics, economics, and culture there. They are rich with ideas, settings, and characters. Taken as a whole, they may be the most profoundly optimistic science fiction I have ever read, in terms of a prospect for humanity's management of our own survival and increased objective welfare. The chronological scope of the three books is the adult lifetime of the "first hundred" Martian settlers, which, thanks to technological advances in the course of the story, is about two centuries. The period covered by this third book also includes the human settlement of many portions of the solar system besides Mars, a period called the accelerando. (I had previously read Charles Stross's novel of the same name, without realizing that it took the cue for its title from Robinson.)

These books are really a monumental accomplishment within the science fiction genre. The precedents they set have already been notable in the work of excellent writers such as the aforementioned Stross and Ian McDonald, and it would not be undeserving if they came to have an influence on early 21st-century sf comparable to that of The Lord of the Rings on late 20th-century fantasy. In addition to the high literary quality and philosophical substance of these books, the futurism of the story has weathered the subsequent decades better than any other sf (of a similar scale) that I can recall.

Blue Mars is a much gentler book than the two earlier volumes. I had hypothesized occult infrastructures for the others: Egyptian myth in Red Mars and alchemy in Green Mars. Notice that even in those two points there is a progression from the theological to the naturalistic, and in this third phase, the power in question -- the conception of viriditas, as Robinson denominates the fundamental life force -- has become even more immanent to humanity and our worlds. There are tastes of the folkloric in each volume, descending from the epic to the quotidian: the Gargantuan Big Man who created the Martian landscape, the Lilliputian little men who subliminally areoform human society on Mars, and the legendary projections of the first hundred themselves. Seen from the esoteric pattern laid down in the first book, however, the series progresses from the reign of Osiris (John Boone), to the work of Isis (Hiroko Ai), and finally to the generation's end still watched over by Anubis (Desmond "Coyote" Hawkins).

The final leg of the journey featured the surprising, but to me completely believable, manifestation of an intimate bond between two main characters seen mostly as antagonists over the two hundred years of the preceding story. I had glossed Ann Claybourne and Sax Russell as Maat and Ptah, respectively, when I read the first book, and they came to be emblematic of the polar opposition between Reds and Greens in the second. Their vexed yet fruitful romance in Blue Mars was a reading experience that will stick with me for a long time.

The earlier books had already distanced Robinson's Mars from the escapist entertainment that some identify with science fiction, and in Blue Mars the customary open-ended serial form is declined, in favor of a completed work of impressive scope and integrity.

The Acts of the Martian Colonists play themselves out in a piece of American Exceptionalism, mimicking the War of

Independence, yet again. Well done, in a familiar setting. ( )