Red Mars by Kim Stanley RobinsonMy review
rating: 4 of 5 starsThe first part of a trilogy detailing the colonisation of Mars in the twenty-first century and beyond, this is hard science fiction of the most interesting kind. The science is not just the practicalities and ethics of terraforming a planet, but also the social and political science of establishing new forms of society and government from the early roots of the first hundred colonists to mass immigration and the interference of Earth transnational corporations.
The book opens with a political assassination amidst an apparently utopian inauguration ceremony for a Martian town, and then flashes back to the space flight and landing of the initial colonisation. The story is told from multiple viewpoints - political leaders, engineers, scientists both pro and anti terraforming and covers many years of building, development and eventual revolution.
An excellent and on the whole optimistic view of the future.
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