Green Mars

'Green Mars' is the second volume in Kim Stanley Robinson's monumental trilogy which began with 'Red Mars' and concludes with 'Blue Mars'. The 'Mars' trilogy is the product of years of dedicated research, and the author's fascination with the Red Planet. The result is a timeless masterpiece, the ultimate in future history.

Frozen lakes form, lichen creeps over dry stone, a thin atmosphere wraps the planet. Man's dream of a new world is underway, but corrupted. Earth's transnational corporations have set about plundering Mars for profit. They buy and sell countries, why not planets too?

The survivors of the First Hundred know that technology alone won't bring utopia; but although in the grasping corporations they have a common enemy, they cannot agree to a means, let alone an end. Do they want bloody revolution or peaceful co-existence? It seems that trust and co-operation are as thin on the ground as the Martian air they breathe.

Robinson's intricately woven narrative deftly explores how the coming of people has changed Mars, and how Mars has changed them. This central volume of an epic trilogy skilfully imagines the evolution of a society on the fourth planet from the sun. In the words of Arthur C Clarke, Robinson's books are "the best novels on the colonisation of Mars that have ever been written".