Customer Reviews (1)

The epic trilogy comes to a close
Following the more exciting and intriguing volumes RED MARS and GREEN MARS, the less eventful and slightly more plodding BLUE MARS brings Kim Stanley Robinson's great trilogy to a close.It was instantly declared a classic -- probably the most recently composed piece of SF fiction to have achieved that status.It has been declared as the work most crucial in bringing back hard SF to the marketplace (after several decades of either metaphysical SF in the mode of Philip K. Dick, who for record is my favorite SF writer, or one multi-volume space opera or fantasy disguised as SF).What is most overwhelming about Robinson's Mars Trilogy is the minute and meticulous detail in which he discusses precisely how the surface of Mars could (and would during the course of the books) be transformed to accomodate human living.

The book is likewise dominated by politics, and this on two levels.First, he imagines separating factions based on the varying ways Mars' inhabitants would prefer to form society in order to relate to the planet.Second, and very interestingly, all of these political parties are post-Marxist.Though none are explicitly Marxist in either their rhetoric or in their self-identification, all are in that they are post-capitalist (something that Marx predicted would be the material outcome of history).So the book functions as an imagining of how life after capitalism could exist.For instance, under capitalism men and women who are not the owners of capital are forced to sell their labor for wages.This is the universal condition in a Capitalist society as described by Marx.Because the labor is expended on things not directly required by the worker, the condition is described as alienated.But if you notice in Robinson's Mars, there are no salaries and people are allowed to work directly on the projects that they choose.Whether it is workable is not my concern.I merely find it interesting that this is one of the very, very few attempts in literature to describe a post-capitalist society.(Though Robinson also did this in one of the books in the California trilogy.)

Another word on this.Most Americans have a very confused and wildly inaccurate understanding of Marxism.They crudely conflate it with Communism as practiced in Russia, China, and Cuba, something that would have horrified Marx, not least because he was a passionate democrat (indeed, far more than Adam Smith, who was not a supporter of universal suffrage -- actually, neither was Marx, who while he felt that all men, regardless of their status as landowners, should be allowed to vote, was doubtful of the wisdom of allowing women to do so -- still, Marx's vision of enfranchisement were far more embracive than Smith's).Robinson is a Marxist, but he is clearly a Western Marxist, attached to thinkers like Gregor Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ernst Bloch.While most of these writers held more or less negative views about modern culture, Bloch was, like contemporary Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson, far more positive about the literary and artistic products.Robinson clearly has a great deal in common with Bloch and Jameson than with the more dour Marxist theorists.It isn't an accident that Bloch's most famous is the massive (in English translation, 3 large volumes) THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE [Hoffnung] (a work that subsequently inspired Jürgen Moltman in writing THE THEOLOGY OF HOPE, which in turn was the major inspiration on the Catholic theologians putting forth Liberation Theology), appears obliquely but unmistakably in the Mars Trilogy.One of the landmarks on Robinson's Mars is known as Blochs Hoffnung.

I go into the Trilogy as a Late Marxist or post-Capitalism trilogy because I'm not sure that many have picked up on it.But it is sufficient to proclaim this one of the finest Marxist literary works ever written.It is also fascinating in that it reveals a political future in which the totalitarianism that many ascribe to Marx's ideas is not present, but instead only the democracy of which he was a passionate partisan.

Plotwise BLUE MARS is easily the least exciting of the three books.In fact, it is often merely plodding, tracing the ongoing shifts and changes in the flora and fauna of the rapidly developing planet.Robinson is also unceasing in imagining the subcultures that might develop on this new world, some of them not terribly appealing and some not unpleasant at all.And his constantly asking "What next?" leads us to visits to other planets and other moons in the solar systems, and although we do not follow them there, we even see some departing to other solar systems.Robinson's imagination knows few limits, simultaneously questioning where technology, politics, social mores and norms, economics, religion, and culture would go under these new conditions.The overall effect is breathtaking.No other writer in the history of SF has so comprehensively a future world might develop out of our own.

My lone complaint with the book is that this third volume tends to drift a bit.The point seems more to witness how the world might continue to change.There certainly is little in the way of a dominant narrative and even the arcs for the main characters feel more like add ons.Saxifrage Russell remains as fascinating as he was in GREEN MARS (he was something of a major secondary character in RED MARS).I always enjoy any bit where the book focuses on him.I never was able to warm up to Nirgal and never found Jackie to be the tiniest bit likable.Nadia and Art were less important; Michel slight more important while Maya remained herself.And it was a delight to see Ann rejoin the fold.But the main reason the book plods somewhat compared to the earlier volumes is the ongoing lack of any major conflict.It was like Robinson wanted to see how the attempt to terraform and cultivate Mars was going to go, but couldn't come up with a dominant story arc around which to display that.

Not that this is in any way a bad book.It simply isn't the exhilarating read that the first two books were.Mainly, the novel is an excuse to spend more time with characters we've gotten to known and love, or at least like.It doesn't add a great deal to GREEN MARS.No one loving those two books should avoid reading this one.But one should also not expect this one to be a game-changer like those two were.

Still, sitting back and looking at the three books as a total, this has to stand as one of the great works in SF history.These books have no competitors in describing a future world in such great and plausible detail.There have been other long sagas, like the Dune novels, but those were barely SF and perhaps should be considered fantasy.While the Mars Trilogy is also a political fantasy, it is more than anything the great work of hard science fiction.The third novel is a mild disappointment, but all in all this trilogy is unrivaled in the depiction of hard SF. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The epic trilogy comes to a close
Following the more exciting and intriguing volumes RED MARS and GREEN MARS, the less eventful and slightly more plodding BLUE MARS brings Kim Stanley Robinson's great trilogy to a close.It was instantly declared a classic -- probably the most recently composed piece of SF fiction to have achieved that status.It has been declared as the work most crucial in bringing back hard SF to the marketplace (after several decades of either metaphysical SF in the mode of Philip K. Dick, who for record is my favorite SF writer, or one multi-volume space opera or fantasy disguised as SF).What is most overwhelming about Robinson's Mars Trilogy is the minute and meticulous detail in which he discusses precisely how the surface of Mars could (and would during the course of the books) be transformed to accomodate human living.

The book is likewise dominated by politics, and this on two levels.First, he imagines separating factions based on the varying ways Mars' inhabitants would prefer to form society in order to relate to the planet.Second, and very interestingly, all of these political parties are post-Marxist.Though none are explicitly Marxist in either their rhetoric or in their self-identification, all are in that they are post-capitalist (something that Marx predicted would be the material outcome of history).So the book functions as an imagining of how life after capitalism could exist.For instance, under capitalism men and women who are not the owners of capital are forced to sell their labor for wages.This is the universal condition in a Capitalist society as described by Marx.Because the labor is expended on things not directly required by the worker, the condition is described as alienated.But if you notice in Robinson's Mars, there are no salaries and people are allowed to work directly on the projects that they choose.Whether it is workable is not my concern.I merely find it interesting that this is one of the very, very few attempts in literature to describe a post-capitalist society.(Though Robinson also did this in one of the books in the California trilogy.)

Another word on this.Most Americans have a very confused and wildly inaccurate understanding of Marxism.They crudely conflate it with Communism as practiced in Russia, China, and Cuba, something that would have horrified Marx, not least because he was a passionate democrat (indeed, far more than Adam Smith, who was not a supporter of universal suffrage -- actually, neither was Marx, who while he felt that all men, regardless of their status as landowners, should be allowed to vote, was doubtful of the wisdom of allowing women to do so -- still, Marx's vision of enfranchisement were far more embracive than Smith's).Robinson is a Marxist, but he is clearly a Western Marxist, attached to thinkers like Gregor Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ernst Bloch.While most of these writers held more or less negative views about modern culture, Bloch was, like contemporary Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson, far more positive about the literary and artistic products.Robinson clearly has a great deal in common with Bloch and Jameson than with the more dour Marxist theorists.It isn't an accident that Bloch's most famous is the massive (in English translation, 3 large volumes) THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE [Hoffnung] (a work that subsequently inspired Jürgen Moltman in writing THE THEOLOGY OF HOPE, which in turn was the major inspiration on the Catholic theologians putting forth Liberation Theology), appears obliquely but unmistakably in the Mars Trilogy.One of the landmarks on Robinson's Mars is known as Blochs Hoffnung.

I go into the Trilogy as a Late Marxist or post-Capitalism trilogy because I'm not sure that many have picked up on it.But it is sufficient to proclaim this one of the finest Marxist literary works ever written.It is also fascinating in that it reveals a political future in which the totalitarianism that many ascribe to Marx's ideas is not present, but instead only the democracy of which he was a passionate partisan.

Plotwise BLUE MARS is easily the least exciting of the three books.In fact, it is often merely plodding, tracing the ongoing shifts and changes in the flora and fauna of the rapidly developing planet.Robinson is also unceasing in imagining the subcultures that might develop on this new world, some of them not terribly appealing and some not unpleasant at all.And his constantly asking "What next?" leads us to visits to other planets and other moons in the solar systems, and although we do not follow them there, we even see some departing to other solar systems.Robinson's imagination knows few limits, simultaneously questioning where technology, politics, social mores and norms, economics, religion, and culture would go under these new conditions.The overall effect is breathtaking.No other writer in the history of SF has so comprehensively a future world might develop out of our own.

My lone complaint with the book is that this third volume tends to drift a bit.The point seems more to witness how the world might continue to change.There certainly is little in the way of a dominant narrative and even the arcs for the main characters feel more like add ons.Saxifrage Russell remains as fascinating as he was in GREEN MARS (he was something of a major secondary character in RED MARS).I always enjoy any bit where the book focuses on him.I never was able to warm up to Nirgal and never found Jackie to be the tiniest bit likable.Nadia and Art were less important; Michel slight more important while Maya remained herself.And it was a delight to see Ann rejoin the fold.But the main reason the book plods somewhat compared to the earlier volumes is the ongoing lack of any major conflict.It was like Robinson wanted to see how the attempt to terraform and cultivate Mars was going to go, but couldn't come up with a dominant story arc around which to display that.

Not that this is in any way a bad book.It simply isn't the exhilarating read that the first two books were.Mainly, the novel is an excuse to spend more time with characters we've gotten to known and love, or at least like.It doesn't add a great deal to GREEN MARS.No one loving those two books should avoid reading this one.But one should also not expect this one to be a game-changer like those two were.

Still, sitting back and looking at the three books as a total, this has to stand as one of the great works in SF history.These books have no competitors in describing a future world in such great and plausible detail.There have been other long sagas, like the Dune novels, but those were barely SF and perhaps should be considered fantasy.While the Mars Trilogy is also a political fantasy, it is more than anything the great work of hard science fiction.The third novel is a mild disappointment, but all in all this trilogy is unrivaled in the depiction of hard SF. ... Read more