Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After the initial colonization of Mars and the failed revolution against the meta-national Earth based corporations in Red Mars, the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, Green Mars picks up with the survivors of the revolution living a hidden life in the southern regions of the planet where the hungry corporate resource exploiters have yet to descend in numbers. The early colonists hide, fractured by philosophical and political differences, divided from each other, from their children, and from the “occupying” corporate workers who run the planetary infrastructure. This book is about finding agreement in differences and how a morally superior minority might overthrow a massively powerful and wealthy controlling influence.
Since the first book, the terraforming project that is the most interesting part of the series has progressed, the atmosphere is growing, though CO2 levels are a significant problem. Plants and animals are being introduced to the landscape and the frozen water pumped to the surface of the red planet is melting. This terraforming happens too quickly for plausibility, but it is interesting to see the logic behind the different steps that are taken as they try to balance the different needs of humanity.
The debate surrounding terraforming started in the first book continues, the radical wing of the separatist rebels engages in escalating acts of eco-terrorism destroying terraforming equipment and providing multiple incentives for the meta-national corporations to respond in force, which they surprisingly, as fundamentally evil capitalist oppressors don’t do for a very long time. .
My inherent biases are at play here, I can understand environmentalism and trying to protect native habitats when those habitats include life, but fighting to keep a cold dead rock uninhabitable while living on it strikes me as an ultimately untenable and spiteful action. Regardless, this book is not strictly about these conflicts, they only set the backdrop for the resolution of differences in a brokered convention among the different parties.
The best part of the novel was again the scope and the structure that made it feel like the reader is watching a historical event unfold. The most interesting aspect was when a underground planetary congress comes together to draft their declaration of independence and hammering out the ideals that they can agree on and what structures they might be able to build on top of that.
The biggest flaw with the novel was that the rotating cast of viewpoint characters and the scope of the different debates that were happening perspectives frequently disappeared at points where it would be inconvenient to address, or difficult to reconcile. The entire meta-national corporation conflict with the insurrectionists is conducted through hearsay and never given voice outside of the character of William Fort, the president of the lone progressive corporation Praxis who says he values freedom and spends his time surfing and concocts a plan to acquire the Martian rebellion. This plan starts out like it might be the most interesting part of the novel, and the new character that it introduces Arthur Randolph starts off seeming like he is going to provide a very interesting capitalist ambassador perspective as he infiltrates the rebellion with the intention of turning them to Praxis’s needs, but instead once he meets up with the Martian colonists his viewpoint is replaced and when we next see through his eyes he is happily working away at Martian goals and Praxis turns out to be a benevolent ally always willing to do whatever they need that requires outside resources to accomplish. In a particularly interesting case when the rebellion turns to an armed assault on a security installation to rescue a captured friend immediately after he meets the rebels, Art disappears from a rover with no mention while other characters have conversations around him that would be awkward if he were part of.
The same kind of silencing happens to the Reds, the radical environmentalist group that engages in armed terrorism against terraforming efforts. They continually engage in their violent attacks in the background. But they peacefully attend the meeting where the global revolution agenda is ironed out, they are given radical concessions as the Green party itself is a radical environmentalist party and they grudgingly sign off on the terms but then continue doing what they always did, just without any hope of accomplishing it after they have capitulated. Ann, their figurehead leader from among the first colonists even has a defining moment where she decides to change how she does things and determining to take action after which she fades from the foreground and sits on her hands doing nothing for the rest of the book.
All in all I found the book interesting, and it made me think about important questions, though it was narratively flawed and unconvincing as an environmental socialist manifesto, it did make me think more deeply about how human actions and their environmental consequences should be considered in a larger scale to best protect the world and humanity, even if I think coming to a consensus as to how will be significantly different that this story presents.