Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars and Green Mars in an omnibus volume. Hey - it's even still available from Fictionwise, though only in PDB or PDF formats. But a lot cheaper than buying the separate volumes at Amazon.
I've heard good things about these, now to find out if I agree. |
Well, sort of. It's an interesting near-future story (much nearer now than when it was written). But even for the time it was written, I think it was overly optimistic on technological advances.
The bit where it loses me is when it's apparent that complex electronics are quickly and easily manufactured. Well, that and the likelihood of a massive international effort to Mars.
Some of the characters are interesting, but we're not really allowed to become deeply involved with any of them, as the story isn't really about them, but about Mars, technology and politics. Which is why it's surprising that there's not more about how the effort could ever have got off the ground.
We start off with a murder as a hook. But, throughout the rest of the story, filling in the background leading up to the murder, and then carrying on after the murder, we're never really giving any convincing motive for the murder. No-one ever find out that the death was planned by the murderer. A very odd sub-plot that goes nowhere.
And much of the rest of the story is like that. It may be an attempt to depict reality — that often there aren't grand designs behind events, they just happen, with no-one really planning them in advance.
But it didn't really work for me. So I stopped after Red Mars. I might well go on and read Green Mars (although it seems to be longer than Red Mars, which was more than long enough) when I've gone through more of my backlog.
Speaking of which - now onto
Night of Madness, by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Sadly only available in paper, not ebook formats. I have it in paper, but I've never got around to it. So I've had to improvise a solution.
It should be a quick, fun read.