Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Attendees: A. T. Campbell, III; Fred Duarte, Jr.; Jeff Rupley.

We had a small group at Adventures in Crime and Space to discuss Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars. This book is the concluding volume in a trilogy about the near-future terraforming of Mars. I’d not yet read up to page 100, but Fred had finished the novel and Jeff had re-read the entire trilogy! We all felt that this book was the weakest of the series. Jeff felt that Blue Mars had nothing to offer readers who’d already read the first two. Fred summarized the plot as “Angst happens, technology advances.” I’d detected a tendency to repeat successful elements from the previous books, and Fred and Jeff assured me that it happened throughout the novel. We thus declared this book to be Stan Robinson’s “Return of the Jedi.”

— A. T. Campbell, III