My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mars has had a particular hold on the imagination for centuries, almost as long as the Moon. This book takes our imaginings of Mars to a new level as Mr. Robinson examines what it would be like for the first colonists on Mars, how would their efforts affect Mars, and how Mars would affect the people and Earth too.
Starting with the journey of the first 100 colonists to Mars, this book devotes different parts to different key players in the story in a revolving limited third-person perspective. Because you follow a character's perspective for quite awhile, you are able to gain an appreciation for all of the characters from different angles. Characters you may have liked during the beginning become multi-layered as you see them from another's perspective.
But the really great thing about this book is how Mr. Robinson explores to just how terraforming the planet Mars could work, but how the process of terraforming Mars would change the people involved, even change the planet Earth and its politics ban home. It is an incredibly multi-layered examination of space exploration and colonization that is not found in other books out there.
This is not a perfect book though. For example, it takes Mr. Robinson a long time to really build up some momentum. The first third of the book or so takes a while to set up what will ultimately become the main conflict of the book. But once the stage is set, everything comes together very well. Another problem with this book is some of Mr. Robinson's characterizations of female protagonists, particularly the character Maya. Though she is one of the first hundred, her main function in the story appears to be to bounce between relationships with two of the key male protagonists, John Boone and Frank Chalmers. When she is with one, she wants to be with the other and vice versa. And, aside from acting as some kind of leader in the latter part of the book, her main function appears to be mostly in her sex appeal, not as full character in her own right.
Despite these problems, this book is a great sci-fi novel that paved the way for other similar sci-fi novels to look beyond just simple exploration of the stars and imagine colonizing them as well. Though it takes a long time to build momentum and Mr. Robinson's characterization of his female protagonists is a bit problematic, this is a classic of modern sci-fi that I would recommend to anyone who is interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment