Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This story is at its best when looked at the widest scope: it tries to tell the story of the whole world of Mars as it comes into contact with humanity and both begin the process of changing each other.
This story plays out in some ways more like a colonial history than a novel. Revolving round the first settlers sent to live on Mars and the struggles that they face as they try to build a society there. The novel is above all concerned with the philosophical restructuring of society as mankind evolves out of the current world order. Several elements of the story are introduced just to these ends, (minor spoiler alert) the most notable being the longevity treatments that allow the characters to live through a much larger span of history of the world. The science, economics and characters of the story are all tools used Kim Stanley Robinson towards envisioning a better future. The characters are more philosophical positions than they are people, and when they have character development that changes their philosophy it is usually forced and serendipitous at the same time.
What I find most interesting about the story is the terraforming efforts and the conflict structured around it. This is the more interesting struggle in the story as it is presented more ambiguously, there are interesting discussions raised about the methods that should be used and whether it is more important to have breathable air or more warmth and how much destruction is necessary to create this human habitable world. Some of the other conflicts in the story seem to fizzle out without much effect such as the briefly mentioned Christianity of one of the characters and her followers. But most disappointingly the climax of this installment of the story arises in the background of the narrative from the faceless capitalist boogeyman and swiftly changes the layout of the setting for the next installment without much action or agency on the part of the viewpoint characters. The capitalist position is never given a voice or given a chance to prove its values: despite the fact that the colonization of Mars is only able to occur in the first place on top of a vast amount of money that was spent to send these colonists and support them in their work towards making Mars livable.
Despite its shortcomings I enjoyed the story a lot, the multiple perspectives that it offered with viewpoint characters changing throughout the story were interesting and enjoyable. The characters were not the main point of the story, but were entertaining and enjoyable even beyond the philosophical positions that they represented. The science and the logistics was intriguing if reliant on hand-waving some significant issues and I loved the descriptions of the clever ways that the colonists used automation, robotics and chemistry to build their shelters and start the beginning of an entire world infrastructure. But the struggle of fighting against the harsh Martian landscape was often disappointingly easy, and the amount of material and starting equipment they are provided with from Earth would be staggeringly expensive to get to Mars. But it is obvious that Kim Stanley Robinson wanted to tell the story about the psychological and cultural changes, not the physical struggles and vast monetary expense incurred.