Blue Mars

OMG. I finished it. I FINISHED. Hoooo my God. I no longer have this goddamn Mars trilogy hanging over my head like a hard-sf socialist Damocles sword that WILL NOT LET ME SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT. I am free of KSR! FREEEEEEE!!!

By the end of this massive, MASSIVEEEE book (and trilogy), the now-200+ year old original characters are wringing their hands about the limits of their “gerontological treatments” - that is, the fancy future medicine that has allowed them to live over two centuries. There is a lot of meditation on aging, and memory, and cognition. I guess this is KSR's way to reflect on this magnum opus he has just completed. Remember back in 2061, how crazy shit got, when John died and the space elevator fell down? Yeah, holy shit right. For me, however, it was a reflection of HOW MUCH OLDER I FEEL NOW THAT I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THIS SERIES.

I mean, I kid. I love KSR. I love this series. Well, love/hate. Love that is sometimes excruciatingly dull. Like meditation! I am glad I no longer “have to” read any more KSR!

I started this LONG GERONTOLOGICALLY CHALLENGING JOURNEY in 2012, with Red Mars. I would highly recommend Red Mars to anyone and everyone. It is visionary. In 2015, I read Green Mars, which I would still basically recommend. Actually, there are lots of great bits in Green Mars - like the introduction of Nirgal, Mars's enlightened young Buddha/golden boy, and the sudden emergence of Sax as one of the best characters. The bit when a traumatized, chaotic, very-neuro-atypical mad scientist Sax decides to blow Phobos out of the sky! SCREW YOU, PHOBOS! I liked that scene so much I named my computer after it (“Phobos”).

In the intervening years, I have read a bunch of other KSR: namely, 2312 (fine), The Years of Rice and Salt (glorious), Aurora (fine, but library loan ran out), New York 2140 (omg indulgent, threw across room), and Lucky Strike (good insight into KSR's KSRness).

And now, finally, Blue Mars. I can safely say that you do not need to read Blue Mars. The power and the glory of KSR's vision is well-established in Red and Green Mars: the struggling post-capitalist utopia, the metanational corporations screwing everything up, the many, many, MANY diversions into Martian geology, the science-maker resourcefulness. It is all there. Also the not-so-good bits: the many, many, MANY diversions into Martian geology (good Lord), the KSR favorite “angry unlikable lady” caricature (man, he loves those angry ladies). Then there are the bits that challenge your Zen calm: the INCREDIBLY LONG digressions about the color of soil or the color of the sunset.

Anyway, Red and Green Mars was - and I kid you not - life changing for me. Blue Mars was like the incredibly indulgent, boring tail-end. I still completely buy the world. I buy this future. I BELIEVE in it, very strongly. But Blue Mars is basically just KSR playing around in the glorious sandbox that he has just built, and not really worrying about plot or whatever. Like, it's just about LIVING in this world... and LIVING... and LIVING... and living for many years. Hey, you know what? Maybe this is all a meta commentary on the longevity of these characters' lives; the monotony; the recurrence of the same old political tensions? If so, bravo, KSR. I too felt that sweep of nostalgia coupled with INCREDIBLE boredom.

But yeah. Blue Mars is so indulgent. It kinda hits New York 2140-levels of indulgence. Like, every sex scene felt - oh God, very very bad, please stop. We spend pages and pages with Sax's color chart, as he looks at the sky and tries to identify the color. Long, long lists of colors. We have a few interesting digressions that are clearly setups for later KSR books. For example, there's a nice sequence when a group of the characters flies back to Earth on a diplomatic mission. Earth has now suffered from one massive polar ice cap “pulse” and is half-drowned. Also overpopulated. Anyway, this is clearly the Earth of New York 2140. Another example: we follow a third? fourth? generation Martian, Zo, around as she flies diplomatic missions around the developing solar system - we visit the equatorial train city on Mercury and the kinda glum outposts way out on Pluto (I think it was?). Anyway, this is all (especially the Mercury train city) clearly setup for 2312.

But, honestly, I had to skim the final section of this book - I just couldn't take it anymore. And yet - I also miss it now that it's over! I think I might read Red Mars again! IT'S JUST SO GOOD. Maybe I'll make some Red Mars fanart. Truly, good KSR is life-changing. Mediocre/indulgent KSR - and Blue Mars is definitely that - is just OK, propelled forward on the previous glories and nostalgia we have for this amazing world and amazing future he has built.