Red Mars

Hmm. This did not age well. I originally read this in the 90's, probably not long after it came out, and thought it was great. I subsequently read the rest of the trilogy with equal happiness. Now though, 25 years later, this is beginning to show its age.

You can't really fault an author for not predicting the future, but the politics of this novel are beginning to feel very dated. Despite being set in the late 21st century, the geo-politics still feel very founded in the 90's (China is a bit player in this, as opposed to a country that could conceivably send people to Mars in the foreseeable future). There also appears to be a lot of fall-back on ethnic stereotypes to explain behaviour, which I don't think would play well in a book released today.

With regard to the story itself, very few of the characters are sympathetic, which admittedly is not a pre-requisite for a good book, but it does make life a lot easier when the book is this size. Speaking of which, I certainly didn't recall, from my first reading, how much of this involves a character driving from point A to point B. If you edited out all of the driving sequences, which are pretty much endless descriptions of the Martian surface, this book would almost certainly be half the length, with little or no difference to the plot. There is also little real peril; people die, but it feels more like reading a news report rather than an visceral experience. There is also one frankly egregious case of someone being rescued from imminent death that beggars belief, and serves no real purpose except to provide a moment of relief for another character.

On the plus side, if you are looking for a hard science prediction of what a colonization of Mars might look like, this is indeed a classic, and it is easy to see why it has proven popular over the years. Granted there is a an occasional reliance on unobtainium and apparently bottomless financing, but I can forgive that for its stab at a reasonably realistic guess. It is just a pity that so much of the science is buried in such a long drawn-out plot.

So, after looking forward to re-reading this, I am now disappointed and in two minds whether to continue to the rest of the trilogy. On the one hand I did enjoy this hugely when I was younger, but now life feels too short to spend it driving through endless descriptions of red, dusty landscapes.