Cyteen
Hugo winner (1989) and a regular pick for the best SF novel about cloning ever written; its psychogenesis arguments anticipate decades of behavioural-genetics debate.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
Red Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992 · The Mars Trilogy, book 1
What is Red Mars about?
The First Hundred — fifty Russians, fifty Americans, give or take a stowaway — land in 2027 to build the permanent settlement, and immediately begin the argument that will outlast them all: terraform, or preserve? Robinson follows the founders across decades as underground cities rise, a space elevator falls (wrapping the planet like a cheese-wire, in one of SF's great catastrophe set-pieces), Earth's transnationals export their oligarchy, and the first revolution fails bloodily. Geology, psychology and politics given equal weight; the red planet rendered so concretely you can taste the fines in your teeth.
Why it matters
Nebula winner (Green and Blue took the Hugos); the trilogy is the standard against which all planetary-colonisation fiction is measured, cited by actual Mars mission planners.
Where does it sit in the series?
Red, Green and Blue Mars: Robinson's two-century epic of terraforming, revolution and constitution-writing — the definitive account of building a world.
In the Guide from The Mars Trilogy:
- Red Mars (1992)
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