Red Mars

Red Mars is the first book in the Red Mars Trilogy and takes place between 2026 and 2061.

About
In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of three novels that will chronicle the colonization of Mars.

Back cover
For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.

The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. Red Mars shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.

Festival Night
Perspective: Frank Chalmers

Riots occur during a festival in Nicosia, shifting the balance of power on Mars.

The Voyage Out
Perspective: Maya Toitovna

30 years earlier, a spaceship carrying one hundred of Earth's best scientists travel to Mars to create a colony.

The Crucible
Perspective: Nadia Cherneshevsky

The spaceship lands on Mars as a small colony is created on Mars and another on Phobos.

Homesick
Perspective: Michel Duval

Further colonization on and immigration to Mars is authorized as terraforming projects begin, members of the first hundred begin disappearing.

Falling Into History
Perspective: John Boone

Longevity treatments are discovered and sabotage begins against terraforming projects. A giant conspiracy is discovered as the first 100 work to fight against it for a free and independent Mars.

Guns Under The Table
Perspective: Frank Chalmers

Martian society begins to deteriorate under mass immigration and falling living standards. A wave of strikes and riots give way to a revolution.

Senzeni Na
Perspective: Nadia Cherneshevsky

Revolution and War devastate Earth and Mars as they slowly turn into police states.

Shikata Ga Nai
Perspective: Ann Clayborne

The surviving first hundred desperately flee persecution to the hidden colony of Zygote.