Book Challenge #95: The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

Once again it is my reading challenge list time. This time we’re discussing #95, The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The first volume, Red Mars, was published in 1993. The subsequent two novels, Green Mars and Blue Mars were published in 1994 and 1996 respectively. This time we get two firsts for my book challenge. This is the first time I’m revisiting a book I’ve already read, and the first time I enjoyed a series entry enough to read more than the first book. I had read Red Mars a few years ago and remembered liking it, but I never read the other two. This time around I decided to give them a shot, which is why there’s been so much time since my last book post!


Since this is a series I wanted to comment on the books independently before I give my final verdict, so let’s walk through each book.

Red Mars: This is the story of the colonization of Mars. The novel actually starts off in the middle of the story with a point of crisis, then goes back to show the journey of the “first 100” colonists from their voyage from Earth through several decades of life on Mars. This is definitely a hard science fiction novel, and if you don’t recognize words like thermokarst or polyna you might be spending some quality time with a dictionary as you read. However, this novel also looks at the social interactions between the first 100 and the larger political landscape with just as much interest and detail, and that’s why the book is so engaging to me.

We get to see the landscape of this alien world, and how human activity changes it for better or worse. Some characters want to preserve Mars as much as possible, others want to terraform it completely, with various factions at different positions between these extremes. All of these intentions also get clouded by normal human things, romantic entanglements, pettiness, greed, and jealousy. In the end Mars becomes a very different place, and most of the original 100 colonists have died, but you are still left on an optimistic note because there are some groups still standing and there is still work to be done.

I remembered enjoying this book a lot when I first read it, and I enjoyed it again this time so I decided to keep reading the next in the series. Considered on its own I’d be tempted to give this one a rating of 4.5 or even 5 out of 5.

Green Mars: This one picks up a bit after Red Mars left off, starting with the hidden colony under the polar ice cap. At this point at least 2 generations have been born on Mars, and initially it seemed like the story was going to follow mainly their stories but in fact like the first book it bounces around between lots of characters. The points of view include the grandchildren of the original 100, new immigrants from Earth, and several of the first 100 who are still around.

Like the first book, there’s a lot of the science of Mars here, along with other disciplines like economics and sociology. I’ve got a firm grounding in a lot of the science so I was fascinated by it, but if for example you don’t know or care why the percentage of nitrogen in the atmosphere is important then there will probably be big chunks of this book that don’t appeal.

The story here isn’t too different from the later half of Red Mars. There’s fascinating worldbuilding (both in the literary sense and the actual terraforming of Mars sense), but it is also extremely slow paced. I’m invested in the surviving members of the first 100 but it is strange seeing them live to unnatural ages, still driving the destiny of Mars when they should be part of its history. By the time I finished I was satisfied with the story but also unsure whether I wanted to invest the time reading the last book in the series. Taken on its own I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as Red Mars, more like a 3.5 out of 5 rating.

Blue Mars: This book is even more of the same. There’s a lot of long descriptions of martian scenery punctuated by the politics of Mars and the little vignettes that make up the long lives of the novel’s characters. There were a couple of moments in this one that fell flat for various reasons ranging from changes in the characters to lack of obvious narrative direction. The one that broke my suspension of disbelief the most was seeing Sax, the quintessential scientist, be amazed at the existence of a woman math genius. It felt weirdly inconsistent not just with my hope for progress, but with the novel itself, a world hundreds of years in the future where we’ve colonized Mars, where people of different genders and races seem to share life and work and politics and everything else fairly equally.

The few times where I got jolted out of the story in this book also made me think hard about what the narrative was about, and whose story it really is. There’s not much of a coherent journey in Blue Mars for any one character. Instead I suppose this book and the series as a whole are really the story of Mars itself as it gets infected with life and evolves over a few hundred years, or perhaps the story of humanity as it leaves the Earth behind. Taken on its own this was my least favorite of the three books. I would rate it 3/5.

TL;DR: Red Mars is pretty great and I’d recommend it. The other two books in the series have some interesting ideas but get bogged down by slow pacing and lots of descriptive text.

The Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson

Rating: 4/5 stars

Verdict: Thought-provoking hard sci-fi about colonizing another planet, and about social and political power. It is a very long, slow read but full of interesting ideas that make the journey worth it. Would especially recommend the first book of the trilogy.

Next up: The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.


Book Challenge #95: The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

March 2017 Gaming Goals

Another month, another chance to see how badly I failed to meet my gaming goals. How did I do in February?

February Goals

FFXIV: Finish the available Main Story Questline and see the new-to-me raid content.  – Check! Well, almost. I’ve done all of alexander and Dun Scaith, plus Sophia. The only thing I’m still missing is the last trial of the warring triad, and I’m hoping to see that this week.

FFXV: Pick this back up and play at least 2 chapters. – Nope! I did pick it back up. I really really tried to play. But where I left off skytroopers kept dropping in on me every few minutes and they were so much higher level than me I had no chance. Running away constantly is not super fun. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong but I’m probably going to have to restart or ask for help so I can move on.

WildStar: Keep playing once a week, and get my new esper alt to level 30.- Sadly Nope. I played a little in February but my interest tapered off as I got drawn deeper and deeper into the FFXIV abyss.

Justice Monsters V: Clear all of the quests on any difficulty. -Nope. I really thought I’d get through this but I didn’t quite make it. I’ve been playing but mostly farming crystals to upgrade my monsters instead of doing the quests.


March Goals

FFXIV: Keep up with the MSQ as it releases. I don’t want to be left behind when the expansion arrives.

Get at least one more job to 60. This should be easy since ninja is at 58 and astrologian is at 56. I just want at least one more option to mess around with in the down time before Stormblood.

Do the new Hildebrand quests. I haven’t even started the new set that came along during Heavansward. I should probably get on that.

Avoid burnout! This is a strange one, but one of my goals for March is to play FFXIV a bit LESS than I have been. I’ve been running all the raids and doing my daily roulettes and chain running palace of the dead recently. I need to dial things back a bit so I’m not burnt out before all the fun new stuff gets here.

WildStar: Keep playing every week. I’m holding on to this game by a thread and I don’t want to fall completely away from it again. I need to keep setting aside a little time for it.

FFXV: Make some headway. Either by forging ahead through the troubles I’ve been having with random encounters, or by starting over and seeing if I can get myself off to a better start. I really want to love this game but after my initial infatuation with it I’ve been bouncing off it so hard.

Horizon Zero Dawn: I was fully prepared to miss out on this one, or at least wait a while until the price came down. However the amazon prime preorder discount coupled with a forgotten gift card leftover from xmas meant that it’s actually within my budget. I started it last night and so far it’s been AMAZING so I think I’ll be pretty motivated to finish this one.


It’s a pretty FFXIV heavy month here honestly. I’m hoping I can walk the line of getting things wrapped up before the expansion and not completely burning myself out.


March 2017 Gaming Goals

AggroChat #145 – I’m a Hufflepuff

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat145_720

Tonight we have another big rambly show where we start out having zero clue what we are going to talk about… and then wind up recording for a couple hours.  Edited down the show ends up being roughly another hour and a half experience.  Tonight we talk at length about our addiction to Final Fantasy XIV and the Palace of the Dead.  Grace and I talk a bit about the blah feeling this latest patch cycle has given us in World of Warcraft.  Bel talk about getting into the Crowfall pre-alpha and how it is in fact a piece of software that he installed on his system and does in fact launch.  We talk a bit a bit about the weird City of Heroes nostalgia game wave and how there really is only room for one of those titles in the market.  We also talk about the drought of MMOs on the horizon and how instead it seems to be the Golden Age of expansions for existing games.  Bel gives an update on the gaming at work thing, and his first steps into God Eater.  Finally we have a weird offshoot into talking about building Gundams before wrapping things up.

Topics Discussed: Final Fantasy XIV – World of Warcraft Blahs – Crowfall Disappointment – City of Heroes nostalgia – Drought of New MMOs – Golden Age of Expansions – Elder Scrolls Online – Work Gaming Space – God Eater – Gundam Kits

I’m a Bard

I had a lovely long weekend and spent most of it doing increasingly silly things in FFXIV, and tying up loose ends in WoW. On the WoW front, I’ve been gradually losing interest since Nighthold released, and only partially sure why other than being distracted by FFXIV. I’ve resolved to let my subscription lapse for a little while, so I spent some time cleaning up my bags, making sure my mail was empty, and other housekeeping things. I realized that the Love is in the Air event was about to end and I had barely even tried to get a rocket this year, and I’m surprisingly ok with that. Even though they changed it so you don’t have to be max level to try, I just couldn’t bring myself to care enough to grind myself into the dirt trying for such a low drop chance mount. I did grind archaeology a little bit, since the bi-weekly quest is currently rewarding a ghost moose mount. Somehow grinding for a set endpoint is much easier to stomach than grinding for a tiny random drop chance. Anyway now I’ve got a sweet new mount and can walk away from the game for a break in style.

On the Final Fantasy front I am fully engaged in what feels like a series of weird side projects with no main overarching goal. My scholar is now geared enough that I feel comfortable that I’ll be able to get into whatever the next set of dungeons is without issue. That means that I’m still slowly working on her gear but it is no longer any sort of priority. I also managed to get my summoner’s gear over the threshold needed for expert roulette. This not only means that I get showered in upgrades, but also that I can actually run dungeons with my healer buddy again finally. Hooray! Mostly the end-game stuff feels like keeping time until the next new thing arrives, and I’m ok with that. I have a lot of other silly things vying for my attention.

One of the silliest things actually got completed this weekend. I finally finished my scholar’s zeta weapon. It took way too long, and probably wouldn’t have happened if most of the steps hadn’t been nerfed into the ground by the time I got to them, but I still feel weirdly proud and happy to have completed it. I will be starting the Heavensward weapon quest soon, but it will be nice to take a breather for a little bit before I start.
I’m a Bard
Another thing I’ve been doing a lot of is running Palace of the Dead. In my last update about my bard, she was trapped deep in the hell of the subligar levels. As of Monday she’s now level 50 and looking much better. I didn’t have any ironworks gear laying around for bard, but I did have some ilevel 100 gear that looks just lovely with her garuda bow thank you very much. Aside from the bard I’ve also gotten my lancer and marauder up to 30 this way, which means I have a freshly minted dragoon and warrior. I doubt I will be playing either of them very often but it has been fun to try them out and to see their class stories. Now I am only missing monk, paladin, and dark knight and I’ll have all the combat jobs unlocked.

The last week or so have seen a renewed flurry of activity in my free company, with lots of new faces and old friends returning to the game in preparation for Stormblood. It has been really fun introducing some people to the game, or helping folks gear up and run new-to-them content. Playing with friends definitely helps make a game more fun and more “sticky”, I’m constantly bouncing around doing all kinds of things I probably wouldn’t be doing on my own. My only real concern is that I’m going to get burned out before Stormblood gets here, so I’m planning in advance to take a mini break before that happens. Other than that I’m settling in and enjoying all the company and the silly things to do!


I’m a Bard