There’s even danger that raising the question of how we live risks shifting the burden of change away from governments and corporations. Kim Stanley Robinson's latest column in Bloomberg Green is on: ' Kim Stanley Robinson Makes the Case for Counting Your Carbon':īecause not much is left in the budget, individual choices are worth thinking about and then changing. when Nirgal and his group camp at the Sufi settlement).īut the main body of this book is to tell the story of what happens on Mars and to the remaining people of the “first 100” in the time between the failed revolution of 2061 and their 100s anniversary there.ĭepictions of the psychological and physiological effects of the “gerontological treament” that allows people to reach literally ‘biblical’ age and how people would cope with getting to grip with a lifetime well over 150 years at the point of narration, the development of a new “phenotype” of homo sapiens on Mars, the geo- and areopolitical conflicts between Earth, Mars and the dozen of “transnational” company agglomerations that finished up owning whole countries diplomacy, sex, creative “eco terrorism”, and bang in the middle of the book the aspirational but somewhat mostly symbolic summit of all the different fractions, cultures and groups on Mars make this book a fascinating read and a very realistic study in human behaviour.ģ0 years after being published still a frightenly current book, perhaps more so than ever.The world turns and I'm back with another impressively long list of links on everything KSR! He doesn’t get carried away by the usual suspects of philosophical, fantastic or religious narration, even though he clearly understands that these form an integral part of human beings’ way of seeing the world, and so they have their (limited) place also in this tome (e.g.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a master at “technical storytelling”, technical meaning that he doesn’t shy away from making the scientific and engineering-based view of reality his anchor point. The terraforming of Mars and the “marsforming of Terrans on Mars” continues at an astonishing pace. It has its lengths, and depending on how the last book in the trilogy will unfold probably suffers a bit from “second part of a trilogy”-syndrome, but still is fantastic SF. Green Mars is the great continuation of a great saga.Īfter having been drawn into the narrative of “Red Mars”, I had to continue straight on with “Green Mars”, which I finished faster than my usual pace.

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson