Red Mars
In 2026, the First Hundred, a mixed team of scientists, engineers, and psychologists selected after years of testing, boarded the Ares and began the nine-month crossing to Mars. Red Mars, the opening novel of Kim Stanley Robinson's 1992 trilogy, follows their first decades on the surface as they argue about whether to leave the planet a frozen red wilderness or to warm it, drop oceans into its basins, and remake it in Earth's image. The conflict between the Reds, who want Mars kept as itself, and the Greens, who want it terraformed, cuts through friendships, marriages, and colony politics, even as Earth's transnational corporations begin to treat the new world as a balance sheet. Robinson writes geology, engineering, and political philosophy with equal patience, and the result is one of the most detailed working-out of a colonized planet in science fiction.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Red Mars
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
First in the Mars trilogy. In 2026, an international group of one hundred scientists lands on Mars to begin centuries of terraforming. Their disagreements about how, and why, fracture the new colony.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy has three main books: Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. A companion volume, The Martians, collects related stories. The trilogy is complete.
Yes. Red Mars won the 1993 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Green Mars won the Hugo in 1994 and Blue Mars won the Hugo in 1997, making the trilogy a rare back-to-back-to-back award sweep.
Red Mars was written by Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 1992 by Demco Media.
Red Mars is 592 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Red Mars takes most readers 9 to 13 hours to finish.
Red Mars is a standalone novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, not part of a series.
Red Mars is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.