Kim Stanley Robinson
Reviewed December 10, 1996
Kim Stanley Robinson
Reviewed December 6, 1997
Blue
Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson
Reviewed May 6, 1999
ISBN 0-553-10144-7
Autographed by the Author December 1997
Read January 30 - April 25, 1999. Finished by accident on a Sunday afternoon.
When I first heard of the trilogy, I bought all three and Blue Mars was still in hardback. Attending the AAS conference in Pasadena, December 3-5, 1997, Robinson gave the final speech in which Blue Mars themes were discussed, but not heavily. He is a green space person and he discussed that too. I talked with him afterwards and got his autograph. He was eager to get off to visit JPL and see some real stuff, but I was not part of that, sadly, that being part of the current problem. On the other hand, director of the Mars Directorate, Norm Haynes had never heard of the Mars trilogy. Why would he need to, he's been there. I suppose. This, in my case, will not stop me from reading Michener's Texas, roughly next.
It was over a year after that conference when I started actually reading this last of the rich series. I'd put it off, bringing a good thing to an end is always sad, but the years of this series have been increasingly hard at work in the real space program. Ad Astra per Aspera as we say, ÒA rough road leads to the stars.Ó Near a professional and emotional low in January, I was working on leaving my current job and maybe JPL and maybe the space business in general and decided to do this book as part of a last chance for the spirit of exploration. It has helped. I cannot say today how or how much.
The ancient ones, Issei and Nissei alike, are getting old and dying suddenly "the sudden decline" they call it, and a minor subplot is the work against this trend. The wall seems to be in the 200-220 age range. Improvements in the longevity treatment, certainly, and also work on other factors of decline, loss of memory for example are undertaken. The remaining First Hundred, fourteen in all, go off to Underhill to take Sax's new memory treatment, which helps. Maya watches, monitors, declines to participate. Many have died suddenly, Spencer -- Michel.
There are adventures and fights, but not nearly the intensity of the prior two books. One of Robinson's pet notions is the Ferals, groups of people who, typically on a temporary basis, live like the ancients, chasing food on the hoof in the wilds, enjoying it more because of the near starvation conditions in which it is eaten. Long distance runner Nirgal runs into a band of them and we spend some days with them. Jackie's daughter Zoe (uber nymph) is there too. Zoe later dies in a flying accident, a shock to all. There is longevity but there are still accidents and they take all ages. ÒSomeone who might have lived 200 yearsÉ.Ó Ultimately Jackie, deposed from top leadership at Mars, heads for Aldebaran on a long term hollowed-out-asteroid flight. "What happened to us, Nirgal?" she says before leaving. What indeed!
The biggest complaint about Blue Mars among my friends and colleagues is too much aerology. Too much describing the scenery on those long trips about the planet, at least for those of us who are more enamored of coordinates than geology (aerology). Perhaps this was intentional, to convey the essential boredom of so much prospecting and surveying. But this was a novelÉ.
The main characters turn out to be Nirgal, Sax, Ann, and Nadia. There they are, making and leading the new Martian country -- world -- planet. We sail the seas, float about in storms, in canals, in seas, travel to Uranus and Mercury, climb around in the Red preserve crater of Olympus Mons and even visit mother Earth. Nadia and Art become a couple. So do Sax and Ann at the end, after having been arch enemies (Green vs. Red) from the beginning, a couple hundred years. We never find Hiroko, but she is sighted everywhere perhaps erroneously, perhaps wishfully. Nirgal spends some time looking for her and finally resolves to give up. Sax encounters her in a crises and is certain it was real. Coyote thinks that she is gone and that they are all crazy. He lives on park benches and 'around' these days. At the very end, in a beach setting with the grandchildren (the children/parents are off on a Feral 'vacation'), Ann has a sudden decline episode, but, due to her fortitude, and perhaps with help from the memory treatment, comes through. An old oriental lady fishes in the surf nearby. It is Hiroko, isn't it.... Isn't it? A Hiroko-type anyway.
The third revolution is essentially bloodless. The planet is a safe place to live. No men abuse women here. The government of coops works, despite its problems and its prima donnas. All the children are above average, and protected. The trips around the solar system and supporting technologies are well described but they are only background to the characters, the tension, and the action.
Toward the end, still sad that it was nearly over, it occurred to me that there is much good science fiction that I haven't read and that I need to be getting to it. This will be done, and that's OK. It was an easy let down. The last section just went by like normal life and then it was over. On Mars. On Mars..... A dramatic shift for a set of novels that begins with the assassination of the main character.
In his AAS talk, Stan Robinson was right. We don't have to invent much to get from where we are today to where they are in the next centuries. No warp drive, no transporter, no time travel, for examples. Nothing unexpectedly new, just continuing improvements and synthesis from what we already know and understand. But he is more an optimistic humanist than I think the real world supports. At least in Blue Mars the species, Homo Martian has perhaps evolved beyond some of the silly political and hubris problems that have plagued the last, oh, well, all of written history, what's that, 6000-1000 years? And, I bet, a bunch before that too. What Robinson sees will indeed happen in some ways but, I think, on a much vaster scale of time. Heck, at the rate we're going, we'll be doing well to have the First Three on Mars by 2061. But, the future is hard to predict, and much unexpected happens.
In the end, I am thankful to have been on this adventure, the real one and the Mars one. I started out thinking I would be a Red Martian. Yeah, sure, I subsist in the Alaskan Wilderness with minimal technology. No, I am partly Green in the sense that Green for earth is Brown or Gray. Once again I am left with the questions, "what have I made of myself?" and "what will I make of myself." Elements of Blue Mars make some useful contributions to the discussion.