Mars trilogy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Red Mars" redirects here. For the planet, see Mars.

The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. 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 (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards. Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarites with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012), for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the Ares, the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built (interestingly, from clustered space shuttle external fuel tanks which, instead of incinerating in the atmosphere, have been boosted into orbit until enough had been amassed to build a ship and also used as landing craft) and home to a crew who are to be the first hundred Martian colonists. The mission is a joint Russian-American undertaking, and seventy of the First Hundred are drawn from these countries (except, for example, Michel Duval, a French psychologist assigned to observe their behavior). The book details the trip out, construction of the first settlement on Mars (eventually called Underhill) by Nadia Chernyshevski, as well as establishing colonies on Mars' hollowed out asteroid-moon Phobos, the ever-changing relationships between the colonists, 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 stakes out the position 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 (the "Areophany") devoted to the appreciation and furthering of life ("viriditas"); 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 Mars Authority (UNOMA), 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 bio-chemical formula that comes to be known as the "Russell cocktail" after Sax Russell; and the detonation of nuclear explosions deep in the sub-surface permafrost to release water. Additional steps are taken to connect Mars more closely with Earth, including the insertion of a geosynchronous asteroid "Clarke" to which a space elevator cable is tethered.

Against the backdrop of this development is another debate, one whose principal instigator is Arkady Bogdanov of the Russian contingent (possibly named in homage to the Russian polymath and science fiction writer Alexander Bogdanov). 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. (In the opening of the book, Chalmers instigates a sequence of events that leads to Boone being assassinated; much of what follows is a retrospective examination of what got things to that point.)

Earth meanwhile increasingly falls under the control of transnational corporations (transnats) 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 loop-holes. 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 scienceone 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, bombardment of several Martian cities (including the city where Bogdanov is himself organizing the rebellion; he is killed), 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. (One exception is Phyllis Boyle, who has allied herself with the transnats; she is on Clarke when the space elevator cable is cut and sent flying out of orbit to a fate unknown by the conclusion of the book.) 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 cease-fire 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. But a new generation of humans born on Mars holds the promise of change. In the meantime, the remaining First Hundredincluding Russell, Clayborne and Chernyshevskisettle into life in Ai's refuge called Zygote, hidden under the Martian south pole.

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. Hiroko Ai's base under the south pole is attacked by UN Transitional Authority (UNTA) forces, and the survivors are forced to escape into a (less literal) 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, Zygote.

As unrest in the multinational control over Mars' affairs grow, 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 the 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.

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