Green Mars
Tonight I finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, Green Mars. It’s the second book in his Mars Trilogy about the colonization and terraforming of the red planet and the sequel to Red Mars. In these books, Robinson lays out an extremely detailed and in depth scientific depiction of the process of making Mars capable of sustaining human life. From the types of plants that could live on the cold surface, to the changing of the atmospheric pressure and composition, to the political and social upheavals on both Earth and Mars, everything is detailed in the most thorough manner.
The problem is that these things are all detailed to an excrutiating degree. While the idea of terraforming Mars is an overwhelmingly interesting one, the reader has to walk through an account of every crater and lichen and rock and millibar of pressure that is involved in the process. It it one of the slowest books I’ve ever read, and although I would like to see how it all pans out in the final book of the trilogy, Blue Mars, I just don’t think I’ll ever have it in me to read it.
That, and most of the characters are unlikable and boring. Robinson writes these books as a series of short stories, each following a different character. In two of the longest and dullest sections of Green Mars, we follow the two most boring and unlikable characters. It’s hard to retain interest and sympathy for the characters and their situations when you don’t care how they end up.
Although the story was interesting and had some riveting moments, much of it was traveling and documenting the planet. Red Mars was the same, except it had a much more interesting storyline. From what I read from the reviews of Blue Mars, it’ll be much of the same types of social struggles and slow progression of the terraforming process.
I need to read something light and fast paced next. Maybe a Beverly Cleary book…
