Kim Stanley Robinson: Red, Green, Blue Mars.

Cafe Society
1

I’m thinking about giving Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books another read.

Red Mars was a tough one to get through at spots, but turned out to be worth the effort. Green Mars really turned up the preaching, and I can’t remember much about it. Green Mars kinda ran into Blue Mars, lots of characters to keep up with.

Still, I do like hard science fiction and these books do turn up often in sci fi discussions among my friends and coworkers.

I remember Robinson’s *Antarctica *as being a pretty good read so maybe I should give them another try.

2

I lost patience with Red when he introduced the “stowaway” aspect, managed to plow through it and just read summaries for Green and Blue.

No regrets.

3

Why not? I have them on my Nook (along with 700+ other books) and I’ll reread them sooner or later.

4

I like hard SF, and I’ve tried to read Red Mars a number of times, but I just can’t get through it. I decided, long ago, that I’ll try to power through books for a while, but if a book gets to be a real chore to read, and it doesn’t look like it will improve, well, there are other books to read.

I have had the experience of starting a book, losing interest in it, and setting it aside for a while. And a while might be a few weeks, or a few years. Then I pick it up again, and suddenly the book is fascinating. Maybe I’ve learned stuff that’s relevant to the book, maybe I’m just in a different mood. But I think that I’ve given Robinson enough chances with his Mars books. Obviously, this is YMMD.

5

Loved all three and have reread the whole series more than once. There are uneven spots, but I’m always taken in by the vision and narrative sweep.

6

I read them a decade or so ago. They had some interesting ideas, but I didn’t really enjoy them much. If you’ve already read them and don’t have a favorable impression, why are you thinking of rereading them?

7

I’ve read Red Mars and got halfway through Green Mars before stalling out. It’s “on hold” right now, and I hope to eventually finish the series, but it’s not as interesting now.

8

It took me several starts before I could make it through “Dune” the first time. I can understand why Red Mars could be difficult to read.

9

I enjoyed the series the whole way through but if you didn’t I don’t see any reason to force it.

“Antartica” simply repeats the themes of R/G/B Mars in a shorter format. That makes it either better or worse, depending on your point of view.

10

Dune is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. I started to discover “Adult” sci fi around 7th grade or so. I read Stranger in a Strange Land during summer of my 8th grade year and almost lost my interest in Sci Fi. I couldn’t believe this was the same Heinlein that had written Have Space Suit: Will Travel. Then I found Dune, loved the book and liked the movie.

For some reason, among my circle of friends, when discussing Sci Fi, Robinson, Ben Bova, Greg Bear, David Brin, are the authors who seem come up the most and I feel like I must have missed something in the Mars trilogy.

11

I finished the series after a long time.

While it had some excellent concepts, when you got to the nitty gritty of the storyline (especially the war) it was obvious that Robinson is one of those authors who has little to no concept of logistics or warfare. When the big storm hits Mars in the 1st book they describe everyone on Mars (which is a sizeable population at that point) eating canned food for years. That is a lot of weight we just shipped out there!

The wars in the books had a bit of an element of ‘you really don’t know how this war thing works, do you’. I saw a similar element in the final Hunger Games book, only with a different tack and not quite so awful. But still sticking out enough to make me scratch my head at times.

12

Well, then either give “Red Mars” a try or not. I’ve never been very interested in reading the LOTR trilogy. I think mostly because in 10th grade I wore out by re-reading my copy of “Bored Of The Rings” and when after that I started to try to read “The Hobbit” I just couldn’t take it seriously at all. “Gollem? Oh, okay, this is Goddam, right? Bilbo? Oh, that’s Dildo!”