Editors Reads Verdict
The third volume of the best hard science fiction trilogy of the twentieth century — less propulsive than Red Mars but richer in its political and philosophical payoff. The treatment of extreme longevity and its psychological effects is the trilogy's most unexpected achievement.
What We Loved
- The political vision — multiple competing visions of how a new world should be governed — is the most sophisticated in science fiction
- The treatment of extreme longevity is psychologically rigorous in ways most fiction avoids
- The geological and ecological detail continues at the level of the previous volumes
Minor Drawbacks
- Less dramatically propulsive than Red Mars — the conflicts are more diffuse
- Some readers find the philosophical passages on memory and ageing slow
Key Takeaways
- → Terraforming raises unanswerable political questions — who owns a planet, and who has the right to transform it
- → Longevity beyond a few centuries produces psychological fragmentation — the self cannot hold that much time coherently
- → The green and red Mars factions represent a genuine conflict between ecological preservation and human expansion that has no clean resolution
| Author | Kim Stanley Robinson |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Bantam |
| Pages | 760 |
| Published | January 1, 1996 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science Fiction |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Readers who have completed Red Mars and Green Mars — the trilogy's conclusion and resolution. |
The Blue Planet
Mars is blue now. The terraforming project that began in Red Mars and continued through Green Mars has succeeded — the planet has an atmosphere, liquid water, a sky. The original colonists, kept alive by longevity treatment, are now centuries old. The planet they transformed has become something neither they nor their creators fully envisaged.
Robinson’s trilogy is the most sustained engagement with planetary-scale ecological change in science fiction. Blue Mars asks the long-term questions: what happens to politics when the crisis is over? What happens to people when they have lived too long to maintain coherent identity?
The Memory Problem
The most unexpected achievement of the final volume is its treatment of memory. People who have lived for two centuries cannot retain it all — the early memories fade, leaving people uncertain who they were and therefore who they are. Robinson treats this as a psychological problem with no technical solution, and it gives the final volume a melancholy that the more dramatic earlier volumes lack.
Our rating: 4.2/5 — A thoughtful, philosophically rich conclusion to the best hard SF trilogy of its era.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Blue Mars" about?
The conclusion of Robinson's Mars trilogy — Mars is now green and blue, the terraforming essentially complete. The political, ecological, and personal questions opened by Red Mars and Green Mars are resolved, as the original colonists age and the generation they created comes into its own.
Who should read "Blue Mars"?
Readers who have completed Red Mars and Green Mars — the trilogy's conclusion and resolution.
What are the key takeaways from "Blue Mars"?
Terraforming raises unanswerable political questions — who owns a planet, and who has the right to transform it Longevity beyond a few centuries produces psychological fragmentation — the self cannot hold that much time coherently The green and red Mars factions represent a genuine conflict between ecological preservation and human expansion that has no clean resolution
Is "Blue Mars" worth reading?
The third volume of the best hard science fiction trilogy of the twentieth century — less propulsive than Red Mars but richer in its political and philosophical payoff. The treatment of extreme longevity and its psychological effects is the trilogy's most unexpected achievement.
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