[kyteflyer]

The city rolled around the planet on Mercury (in the Mars Trilogy) but I still don't know why Robinson had to get into the whole Mercury/Venus thing. Much of his stuff in the trilogy either read like a textbook for god knows what, or else wandered off on tangents which were not clearly related to the story (as I expected it to be told...lol). You be going along at a cracking pace, thinking yetpyetpyep, now I get where he's going with this, and start really enjoying it... then he would flip off to someplace else or some other political/psychological/sociological theory again, or quite suddenly, with no leadin, drop the main character from the previous part and pick up with someone else in the next. Disjointed, and way way too long. I must confess I have found it a struggle and a half to get through and I am still not there yet (about 1/6 of Blue to finish).

My overwhelming feeling about the whole Mars Trilogy was "gawd! get to the point of it all, already!" I doubt that I will read anything more of his.