The Apolyton Science Fiction Discussion Group: Red Mars

[CyberGnu]

St. Leo:

[CyberGnu]

Would Arkady be the mutant stargoat?

[St Leo]

No, Arkady would be the elevator in the Guide offices. They were both into philosophy and both were damaged in a foreshadowed attack from above.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Who cares about who sleeps with whom?!!!!!

That's the best part .

[Odin]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Who cares about who sleeps with whom?!!!!!

That's the best part .

[JohnT]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
The characters... Well, I just found them to be page fillers. Upon re-reading, I usually skip large parts regarding Nayas neuroses, Frank and Johns enmity, EVERYTHING involving Hiroko etc. I just can't care less about their lives and ambitions... There is an entire planet to terraform! Who cares about who sleeps with whom?!!!!!

But it is people who make things happen, and a lot about making things happen depends upon whether other people "like" you for one reason or the other. The politics and who sleeps with whom does matter - John Boone got killed over that very problem alone!

The course of their private lives effected the public decisions that they made, the sort of trade off that is commonly made in the everyday world. To understand some of their decisions, you had to understand them.

[Odin]

The only one of the 100 I hate is Phyllis, what a sellout to the transnationals. I found Nadia finding out that Sax put some cyanobacteria in the windmills funny because she thought Arkady was the guilty guy first.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Odin, I was a bit serious, actually.

I mean, the sex defined a LOT of the interactions. Frank's hatred for John comes partly (ok, mostly ) because of Maya. Hiroko's sex life actually ends up more important than 'she's screwing everyone!!'. As in real life society, who people are having sex with has a great effect on who likes you and dislikes you.

[St Leo]

Frank's hatred for John comes partly (ok, mostly ) because of Maya.

Are you sure? He was quite upset with John coming along for the ride in the first place. After all, John was supposed to be grounded after his historic first voyage and that would have left Frank's leadership unchallenged.

[Static Universe]

This book is a ****ing disaster. I had high expectations for it, as it was sold as a nuts-and-bolts hard sci-fi novel about the terraforming of Mars. Which is everything it isn't.

The first half, everything pre-"Falling into History", is probably among the worst writing I have ever read, and I've read a lot. Anticipating a fairly detailed account of the early days of a scientific colonization mission, what we are presented with instead is "Dawson's Creek Goes To Mars", occasionally broken up with lists of unexplained scientific processes that are somehow related to the settling and terraforming of a planet, maybe.

Even the tools get a page long list, although Robinson never really explains what any of them might be used for, or why it's OK for crew members to steal them for hording purposes.

It's hard to talk about the so-called "terraforming" in the book, as it really isn't there. The characters get an idea then suddenly it's ten years later and everything is already done. Pretty realistic.

Even the landing of the expedition gets short shrift. There's all this tension about the actual landing, then suddenly everyone is down on the ground soaking in jacuzzis. Hello, what about the drama of the water shortage?

And how did they get down there, one wonders? Robinson mentions "parachutes" later, so I guess everything got down by parachutes. Regardless, it's sloppy writing.

I don't really see the "Windmill" bit as an example of an attempt at terraforming that failed. It was really a botched attempt to introduce a dramatic element into the story by having the windmills be a trojan horse for Arkady and Nadia to find out about while they disperse them. Completely unnecessary, as a) the UN approves the spread of genetically engineered lichen a page after the tension is introduced, and b) the lichen die anyway.

Robinson also has serious problems noting the passage of time. Since things flow so quickly in the novel, it probably would have helped to preface sections of the book with dates of some kind, although I never really figured out the Martian calender, or how it relates to the earth calender. Or why the "Martian Time-Slip" is a good idea. Imagine being at your job at midnight and suddenly there's 59 minutes of stopped clock you don't get paid for. And what happens to the computers? Do they register this time?

Well OK, the story is going to be more character driven. I can accept that. But not with these characters.

Everyone in this book is stereotypical as you can get: the mad Russian, the inscrutable Asian, the swarthy bad guy, the fair-haired good guy, the woman who sleeps her way to power, her fat friend. You get the picture.

The character development is probably the worst I've ever seen anywhere, ever, below early 90s Marvel comics even. No one gets more than a token backstory, if that, even the major characters. Most exist simply as stereotypes. Not something that's good in a novel so character driven. We get a little bit about Frank and John in the second half, but not much. Certainly not enough to fully explain Boone's murder.

The Boone-Maya-Frank triangle never really gels, because we never really find out who these characters are. "The Voyage Out", pretty much told from Maya's POV, makes it pretty clear she thinks Frank is a creepy guy, and we never find out why she's madly in love with him in the rest of the book.

The big problem here is Robinson's [botched] attempt to tell the story subjectively, but in the third person, and leaving it for the reader to figure it out a hundred pages in. He does a fair job of explaining how the characters feel, but never really touches on the why.

Which pretty much throws everything out the window as far as actually knowing what the hell is going on with any of the characters, or caring about them. Example: Hiroko is constantly described as "withdrawn". Yeah, she's completely withdrawn, if you don't count the fertility cult she's building out of a tenth of the crew.


"Falling into History" was probably the best part of the book. Boone is a likeable character, and his rambling tour of Mars, which apparently takes a good number of years (but it's hard to tell), is interesting. His drug use never really becomes an issue in any way, and then he's killed before he really has any of the political power he seems to have at the beginning of the book. He meets some people, makes a few speeches, then he's dead. Not really a credible threat to Frank IMO.

The details of the second half I won't even get into, as "Revoluton in Space" is such a sci-fi cliche it isn't really worth discussing, especially since next months book is The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I'll probably refer back to Red Mars next month, so I won't get into it now.

Worth pointing out is the fact that they can use what seem to be fairly cheap methods for terraforming Mars, but somehow back on earth they can't even irrigate a desert to feed all those people? The First 100 clearly needs to publish more in the scientific journals back on earth.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Are you sure?

Yep... most of it was Maya. Frank and John actually get along fairly well, until Maya shows up on the scene. It definetly adds up.

Oh, and SU, if this book was all about terraforming, I would have put it down after 10 pages. I liked the characters and the interplay between them.

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Are you sure?

Yep... most of it was Maya. Frank and John actually get along fairly well, until Maya shows up on the scene. It definetly adds up.

It's pretty clear to me that Frank resents John's presence long before Maya shows up on the scene.

Oh, and SU, if this book was all about terraforming, I would have put it down after 10 pages. I liked the characters and the interplay between them.

Frankly, I'm more interested in a realistic depiction of the hardships of colonizing a new world than I am about some cliche melodrama about revolution.

You can have a realistic hard science fiction novel about terraforming and colonization and still have a good read about how humans live and interrelate under adversity despite differing political and ecological philosophies.

Unfortunately Robinson does not have that novel in him.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's pretty clear to me that Frank resents John's presence long before Maya shows up on the scene.

But he doesn't hate him without the Maya 'threesome'. Without Maya, I don't think it gets that bad. What? Have you never seen people get much nastier when there is a girl involved?

Frankly, I'm more interested in a realistic depiction of the hardships of colonizing a new world than I am about some cliche melodrama about revolution.

BAH!

You can have a realistic hard science fiction novel about terraforming and colonization and still have a good read about how humans live and interrelate under adversity despite differing political and ecological philosophies.

what?

I actually liked how Robinson did it. Much of it was about terraforming and the problems it posed on the people. Going into minute detail about what it takes to terraform Mars would have made me pass.

[chequita guevara]

Static Universe, tell us what you really think. Don't hold back.

Science fiction, even hard science fiction, is about the human condition. It sounds like what you wanted was a technical manual with a story woven through it. Red Mars is a story about what happens to people. None of the situations people come up against in the book are situations we aren't going to have to deal with, one way or another, in the colonization of Mars. The exposure to high levels of radiation for example. I, for one, didn't know that CO₂ was poisonous. I just thought it was a lack of oxygen that made the Martian atmosphere deadly.

Why won't Martian terraforming options work on Earth? Life! The Sahara is a living ecosystem. We place a lot of value on our wild places in this world. People also live in many of these places, so you have to account for them as well, especially in democracies. India may want to displace three million people to create a reservior, but if they refuse to move, they have a problem on their hands. If they're China, they can forcably relocate people.

The problems the Martians are dealing with have little pratical application on Earth. Our problem is global warming. On Mars they want global warming. On Mars, they need to put stuff into the atmosphere. On Earth, we want to take stuff out of the atmosphere. Mars may be a desert, but it's one like the Antarctic, one full of water (at least the story assumes it). Earth is covered in water, but we don't have enough of the right kind of water.

======

Frank's problem with John is all about jealousy. Things come easy to John, Frank has to work for them. Frank was supposed to be the leader of the expedition, John becomes the person everyone looks to, John gets Maya, John becomes unofficial leader of Mars, etc. John is Frank's obstacle in all things, so he must be done away with.

========

So, what happens when new ground is opened up for people to begin livin their lives. At what point do you stop being colonists and become citizens of a new society. What rights do you have, what responsibilities do you owe?

Everything outside Earth is assumed, by existing treaty, to be the common property of humanity. So what happens when people start living there. At what point do they have a more important say in what happens. It's kind of like Alaska or the American West, in this way. Most of those areas are Federal property, the common property of the whole of the American people. People live there, however. Who has the greater right? Proximaty changes the equation, since they are too close to the US to assert any effective independence. Mars, however, is far away. How does that change things?

[St Leo]

Science fiction, even hard science fiction, is about the human condition.

I think that human condition might be too wide a term. Red Mars is certainly quite different from Ringword, Diaspora, and maybe Anvil of the Stars.

P.S. Does anyone else keep misspelling Red Mars as Red Dwarf?