Mars trilogy


The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning 187 years, from 2026 to 2212. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.
The three novels are Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. The Martians is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.
Icehenge, Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarities with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 ; for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

Plot

''Red Mars'' – Colonization

Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the Ares, the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built and home to a crew who are to be the first hundred Martian colonists. The ship was built from clustered space shuttle external fuel tanks which, instead of reentering Earth's atmosphere, had been boosted into orbit until enough had been amassed to build the ship. The mission is a joint American–Russian undertaking, and seventy of the First Hundred are drawn from these countries. The book details: the trip out; construction of the first Martian settlement by Russian engineer Nadia Cherneshevsky, as well as establishing colonies on Mars' hollowed out asteroid-moon Phobos; the ever-changing relationships between the colonists; and debates among the colonists regarding both the terraforming of the planet and its future relationship to Earth. The two extreme views on terraforming are personified by Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, who believes their very presence on the planet means some level of terraforming has already begun and that it is humanity's obligation to spread life as it is the most scarce thing in the known universe; and Ann Clayborne, who poses that humankind does not have the right to change entire planets at their will.
Russell's view is initially purely scientific but in time comes to blend with the views of Hiroko Ai, the chief of the Agricultural Team who assembles a new belief system devoted to the appreciation and furthering of life ; these views are collectively known as the "Green" position, while Clayborne's naturalist stance comes to be known as "Red". The actual decision is left to the United Nations Organization of Mars Affairs, which greenlights terraforming, and a series of actions get underway, including the drilling of "moholes" to release subsurface heat; thickening of the atmosphere according to a complicated biochemical formula that comes to be known as the "Russell cocktail" after Sax Russell; and the detonation of nuclear explosions deep in the subsurface permafrost to release water. Additional steps are taken to connect Mars more closely with Earth, including the insertion of an areosynchronous asteroid "Clarke" to which a space elevator cable is tethered.
Against the backdrop of this development is another debate, the principal instigator of which is Arkady Bogdanov of the Russian contingent. Bogdanov argues that Mars need not and should not be subject to Earth traditions, limitations, or authority. He is to some extent joined in this position by John Boone, famous as the "First Man on Mars" from a preceding expedition and rival to Frank Chalmers, the technical leader of the American contingent. Their rivalry is further exacerbated by competing romantic interest in Maya Katarina Toitovna, the leader of the Russian contingent.
Earth meanwhile increasingly falls under the control of transnational corporations that come to dominate its governments, particularly smaller nations adopted as "flags of convenience" for extending their influence into Martian affairs. As UNOMA's power erodes, the Mars treaty is renegotiated in a move led by Frank Chalmers; the outcome is impressive but proves short-lived as the transnats find ways around it through loopholes. Things get worse as the nations of Earth start to clash over limited resources, expanding debt, and population growth, as well as restrictions on access to a new longevity treatment developed by Martian scientists—one that holds the promise of lifespans into the hundreds of years. In 2061, with Boone dead and exploding immigration threatening the fabric of Martian society, Bogdanov launches a revolution against what many now view as occupying transnat troops operating only loosely under an UNOMA rubber-stamp approval. Initially successful, the revolution proves infeasible on the basis of both a greater-than-expected willingness of the Earth troops to use violence, and the extreme vulnerability of life on a planet without a habitable atmosphere. A series of exchanges sees the cutting of the space elevator cable, bombardment of several Martian cities, the destruction of Phobos and its military complex, and the unleashing of a great flood of torrential groundwater freed by nuclear detonations.
By the end, most of the First Hundred are dead, and virtually all who remain have fled to a hidden refuge established years earlier by Ai and her followers. The revolution dies and life on Mars returns to a sense of stability under heavy transnat control. The clash over resources on Earth breaks out into a full-blown world war leaving hundreds of millions dead, but ceasefire arrangements are reached when the transnats flee to the safety of the developed nations, which use their huge militaries to restore order, forming police states. However, a new generation of humans born on Mars holds the promise of change. In the meantime, the remaining First Hundred—including Russell, Clayborne, Toitovna, and Cherneshevsky—settle into life in Hiroko Ai's refuge called Zygote, hidden under the Martian south pole.

''Green Mars'' – Terraforming

Green Mars takes its title from the stage of terraforming that has allowed plants to grow. It picks up the story 50 years after the events of Red Mars in the dawn of the 22nd century, following the lives of the remaining First Hundred and their children and grandchildren. Melting ice causes the top of the dome of Hiroko Ai's base under the south pole to collapse, forcing the survivors to escape into a underground organization known as the Demimonde. Among the expanded group are the First Hundred's children, the Nisei, a number of whom live in Hiroko's second secret base, Gamete.
As unrest in the multinational control over Mars' affairs grows, various groups start to form with different aims and methods. Watching these groups evolve from Earth, the CEO of the Praxis Corporation sends a representative, Arthur Randolph, to organize resistance movements. This culminates into the Dorsa Brevia agreement, in which nearly all the underground factions take part. Preparations are made for a second revolution beginning in the 2120s, from converting moholes to missiles silos or hidden bases, sabotaging orbital mirrors, to propelling Deimos out of Mars' gravity well and out into deep space so it could never be used as a weapons platform as Phobos was.
The book follows the characters across the Martian landscape, which is explained in detail. Sax Russell infiltrates the transnat terraforming project, with a carefully crafted fake identity as Stephen Lindholm. The newly evolving Martian biosphere is described at great length and with more profound changes mostly aimed at warming up the surface of Mars to the brink of making it habitable, from continent-sized orbital mirrors, another space elevator built, to melting the northern polar ice cap, and digging moholes deep enough to form volcanoes. A mainstay of the novel is a detailed analysis of philosophical, political, personal, economic, and geological experiences of the characters. The story weaves back and forth from character to character, providing a picture of Mars as seen by them.
Sax, alias Stephen, eventually becomes romantically involved with Phyllis, who had survived the events of 2061 from the end of the first novel, but she discovers his true identity and has him arrested. Members of the underground launch a daring rescue from the prison facility where Sax suffers torture and interrogation that causes him to have a stroke; Maya kills Phyllis in the process of the rescue.
The book ends on a major event which is a sudden catastrophic rise in Earth's global sea levels not caused primarily by any greenhouse effect but by the eruption of a chain of volcanoes underneath the ice of West Antarctica, disintegrating the ice sheet and displacing the fragments into the ocean. The resultant flooding causes global chaos on Earth, creating the perfect moment for the Martian underground to seize control of Martian society from Earth. Following a series of largely bloodless coups, an extremist faction of Reds bombs a dam near Burroughs, the major city where the remaining United Nations forces have concentrated, in order to force the security forces to evacuate. The entire city is flooded and the population of the city has to walk a staggeringly long distance in the open Martian atmosphere to Libya Station, in order to resettle in other locations. With this, control of Mars is finally wrested away from Earth with minimal loss of life, leaving the weary survivors hopeful about the prospects of their newfound political autonomy.