Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

This novel is the first in a trilogy about the colonisation and settlement of Mars. It is somewhat out of my comfort zone; I prefer fantasy and paranormal fiction and the science fiction I have read has been mostly Earth-based, for example, PD James’ The Children of Men. I approached Red Mars with a certain level of trepidation; its subject matter was unfamiliar and its size somewhat daunting (it runs to 658 pages.)

I very quickly found the latter comforting and familiar as it put the novel much more on a par with the nineteenth century classics I know and love so much. There are many advantages to a long novel, in terms of the space they allow the writer to build up a whole world to offer the reader. Long novels can, and are produced by windbags who simply don’t know when to stop. They can also be written by an author with a big story to tell, and one who is generous to his or her readers. I’m pleased to say that Kim Stanley Robinson falls into the latter camp.

The narrative begins in 2027, suggesting a timeline that probably looked more feasible in 1992 than it does in 2009. A group of astronauts and cosmonauts on board the Ares succeed in reaching orbit around Mars. They are the first Martian colonists later to be known as the first 100, a form of celebrity that has its drawbacks as well as advantages. They are a diverse bunch – Russians, Americans, a Japanese biologist, a French psychologist and a handful of others, their disciplines range across the sciences – biology, physics, engineering, chemistry, geology, human medicine, and this is one of the major stumbling blocks for the reader, because to begin with, they have the sense of being overwhelmed with science, far more of it, than fiction. However, it is all part of the writer’s vision of the credible world he is attempting to build up. Mars and those who go to live there are completely alien to each other and the ways in which that becomes evident are manifold.

Moreover, the difficulties they encounter are not just physical and environmental. They are all individuals and all clever people who have passed a test to allow them to join the mission. Their brilliance, rather than their veracity got them through the test and so here they are, with their cultural, political and emotional baggage, in a whole new world, while nothing about them has really changed. Not everything can be left behind, as we see through the character portraits of the various personalities. We encounter the histrionic Maya Toitovna, her pragmatic friend Nadia Cherneshevsky, the intense American Frank Chalmers, who finds himself on the outside of a love triangle, Arkady Bogdanov, for whom the colonisation represents a chance to frame a whole new society and Ann Claybourne, who wants to protect Mars from what she sees as human invasiveness. Not only have all of these people lied (consciously or otherwise) to be included in the mission, they all have an agenda. Sometimes, it is upfront, as in the case of Arkady, for others, it is kept out of sight. We do not know what the enigmatic Hiroko Ai and her team of biologists are up to till well into the narrative. The multiplicity of agendas, the political and social inequities that begin to arise and the pressures from Earth, which is falling apart under the weight of its own problems , all create a fascinating narrative, with elements of a thriller and a detective story. The individual storylines and character arcs give the novel elements of a family saga, so that in spite of the hugeness of the plot and the themes, we never lose touch with a more intimate perspective.

The crux of the characters’ dilemma is that there is no going back. Even more than the early European settlers in the Americas and Australasia, the physical difficulties of a return would be enormous and the political and social ones would be even more so. The first 100 become famous in a way that we recognise in 2009 from reality TV. Years before Big Brother and its imitators, Robinson has his characters on a television feed to Earth, where their discussions, problems and disagreements are laid out for billions of people to see. It is hard to see how, or where they would fit back into normal life on Earth, if indeed, such a thing really exists anymore. Those who came after them include the many for whom their own planet no longer has a place. They are housed in the Martian equivalent of a favela and forced to do back-breaking work in return for bed, board and the slimmest hope of a return home. Their presence enhances the comparison with Dickens’s slice-of-life doorstops; Robinson’s approach to Mars is similar to the one Dickens took in describing London, in for example, Our Mutual Friend. He wants to offer the reader as rich and full a view of the world he has created as possible. Ultimately, the many pressures, political, environmental, personal and economic, from both within and without culminate in a tragedy of the most horrendous proportions. Those who remember the events of September 11, 2001 will find these scenes both riveting and horrifying to read.

Although the narrative is often less than optimistic, the beauty of the writing lifts it above sheer pessimism. There are a few stylistic glitches – repetition of phrases that could and should have been ironed out at the proof-reading stage, while editing could have spared the reader the gaucheness of the love scenes. However, what stuck in my mind when I had finished the novel is how beautiful Mars is. Kim Stanley Robinson doesn’t see it as merely the Red Planet. It is all colours, with a wide variety of terrain and geography. Preserving that beauty, while creating a physical and social environment in which humans can live, may indeed become an issue for our beleaguered planet in the future.

Harper Voyager. 1992 (this edition 2009). ISBN 978.0-00-731010-6. 658pp