Green Mars

In the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson began his critically acclaimed epic saga of the colonization of Mars, Now the Hugo Award winning Green Mars continues the thrilling and timeless tale of humanity's struggle to survive at its farthest frontier.

Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed, but the transformation of Mars to an Earthlike planet has just begun The plan is opposed by those determined to preserve the planets hostile, barren beauty. Led by rebels like Peter Clayborne, these young people are the first generation of children born on Mars. They will be joined by original settlers Maya Toitovna, Simon Frasier, and Sax Russell. Against this cosmic backdrop, passions, rivalries, and friendships explode in a story as spectacular as the planet itself.

Quotes and thoughts while reading:

"She was convinced that all human history had gone wrong at the start. At the dawn of civilization, she would say to me very seriously, there was Crete and Sumeria, and Crete had a peaceful trading culture, run by women and filled with art and beauty--- a utopia in fact, where the men were acrobats who jumped bulls all day, and women all night, and got the women pregnant and worshiped them, and everyone was happy. While Sumeria on the other hand was ruled by men, who invented war and conquered everything in sight and started all the slave empires that have come since. And no one knew, Hiroko said, what might have some happened if these two civilizations had had a chance to contest the rule of the world, because a volcano blew Crete to kingdom come, and the world passed into Sumeria's hands and has never left it to this day. If only that volcano had been in Sumeria, she used to tell me, everything would be different." (p 35)

"The desert side of the dike appeared to be some two hundred meters high... The dike was about three hundred meters wide at the top... "Aren't they going to have to replace that whole mound with concrete?" she said to Sax, who had joined her, and was looking through his own binoculars at the sigh.
"Face it," he said... "Face the dike with a diamond coating. That would last fairly long. Perhaps a few million years." (p 584) This is the perfect example of the absurdity present in this book. Since they have the capacity to build up any element they want from their respective elements, they can plan to do ridiculous things like facing a 200m high cliff face with diamonds. This happens all over the book.

Overall, it's a fun read, but just went on too long. I'm sure, in a bit, I'll read Blue Mars, but not anytime soon. The Earth elements included in this book are expanded upon in Blue Mars, and while that might be interesting, I just cant spend another 600 or so pages in this world.