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Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)
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Red Mars (Mars Trilogy) Unknown - 1993

by Kim Stanley Robinson


About this book

Red Mars is the first book in the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. A joint American-Russian mission sends the first colonial voyage to Mars with 100 colonists with the goal of establishing a permanent settlement. Against the backdrop of powerful transnational corporate interests, an Earth crippled by overpopulation and disaster and earnest debate about the role of human activity in planetary terraforming, the novel intertwines sociological, personal, political and scientific themes. Red Mars won the British Science Fiction Award in 1992 and the Nebula in 1993. An ambitious project by Spike TV to create a television adaptation has been on hold since 2016. Other books in the series are Green Mars and Blue Mars.

From the publisher

In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of three novels that will chronicle the colonization of Mars.
For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny. John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists," Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.
The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed. Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, "Red Mars" is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. "Red Mars" shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.

First Edition Identification

Mars was first published in the UK by HarperCollins in 1992. Bound in red cloth boards, it features a black jacket with grey lettering and a red martian scape banded across the front flap and spine. The number line reads 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2. The first US edition was published in New York by Spectra in 1993 and is in a glossy pictorial jacket with a ship orbiting the surface of Mars. 

Details

  • Title Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)
  • Author Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Binding unknown
  • Publisher Tandem Library
  • Date October 1993
  • ISBN 9781417715961