Subject: Green Mars by K S Robinson

From: [email-masked]
Date: 7 Jun 94 11:29:58 GMT

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is the second installment in his Mars
colonization and teraforming trilogy.  The story picks up approximately one
hundred years after the close of Red Mars.  Several new characters, the
ectogene children of Hiroko, are also introduced.

I tend to disagree with the statements I've seen from other reviewers, that
GM is a realistic blueprint for the teraforming of the planet Mars.  The book
is written in a cold style that does make it read like an engineering
document.  However, the time scales seem just too short for this to be an
accurate picture of planetary engineering.  Instead, GM does provide a
reasonably broad and interesting discussion of alternative strategies for the
teraformation of Mars.

KSR is continuing to write a set of obsessive, cold, and some what flat
characters.  In RM this seemed to be done to represent the sort of obsessive
over achievers that would be chosen for a Mars colony expedition.  In GM, the
surviving members of the First Hundred have had their life spans extended via
a longevity treatment.  The treatment does not work well on brain tissue,
thus recipients maintain 50-80 odd years of memory.  As the First Hundred are
pushing 150, their memories of Earth and the events of RM have faded and are
lost to many.  The First Hundred then travel through the story like ghosts.
 Though they are central figures in leading the events of GM, in their
personal lives they tend to wander in search of connections they can use to
anchor themselves and each other.  The two non-First Hundred characters are
also disassociated, Nirgal by lost love and witness to death at a young age,
and Art by divorce and near enforced transplantation to Mars by his employer.
 The result is a cast of characters who remain cold and distant from the
reader.

GM like RM is a bit over long for the material covered, partially due to
frequent side tracking while the First Hundred vainly search for identity.
 All in all, I give the book high marks in spite of its short comings.  For
those who have read and enjoyed RM, GM is smoother and ore consistent read.
 GM also provides some extra insights into the events of RM that makes RM a
little easier to swallow.  My only fear is that I'll have to deal with Blue
Mars next year as part of my 1995 Hugo reading.