Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is the novel of an imagined future in which 100 settlers colonized Mars. They land in 2026, which maybe seemed like a long time in the future when this was published in in the early 1990s, but to my 2019 self seems verrrry close.  These 100 settlers soon break into different factions about what it means to actually be on Mars. Do we exploit it for its mineral resources? Should more people come to Mars?  Should it continue on as a protected place, studied for science? To terraform the planet or not?  Then we see how those splintered groups deal with one another.

There are a lot of really good things to say about this novel. There are women! In power! As main voices in the book! This is nearly unheard of in science fiction, so it was noteworthy to me.  The descriptions of the landscape of the planet were breathtaking and almost convinced me that it might be a nice place to go. Because we have 100 original settlers to follow around, we get a sprawling look at the community, never stuck at one place or with one person. 

But man, it's dry. The characters are boring and have no interesting nuances. The woman who fixes stuff and doesn't ever want to think about politics continues to fix stuff and never think about politics. The fiery Russian woman remains a fiery Russian woman until the very end, never knowing who she really loves.  The diplomat stays a diplomat until the day he's murdered because of his diplomatic ways.  It's a novel in which so much could be done with character development, but so much doesn't get done.

Also, yes, there are breathtaking descriptions on the Martian landscape. But sometimes the descriptions go on for ages and ages.  You might understand if my mind began to wander on occasion.  And please don't get started on the endless descriptions of the technologies that make their lives on Mars possible. Pumps, robots, agriculture, engineering failures, lots of talk of oxygen and nitrogen levels, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I fell asleep just typing all that out. As the great Glen Weldon has said repeatedly on Pop Culture Happy Hour, it's science fiction, not science. What I'm saying is that this book was a little to "hard" science for the likes of me.

I think Andy Weir's The Martian did way better at leavening that hard science for us in a Mars book. Yes, there were calculations about just how many potatoes he could eat and lots of things about thrust and orbital velocity in that book, too, but there was humor and fun!  It wasn't all doom and gloom all the time. 

I'm glad I read Red Mars, but I'm not going to finish the trilogy.