Mars trilogy

The Mars trilogy is a series of three science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson, chronicling the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars. The novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993) and Blue Mars (1996). An additional collection of short stories was published as The Martians (1999).

Characters

• John Boone, an American astronaut. He was the first man on Mars. After returning from Mars, he is a public hero, and uses his considerable influence to lobby for another mission to Mars, this time a colonization mission. Boone received too much radiation on his first trip to make the second one, according to medical regulations; however, his celebrity status allows him to skirt this as well. On the second voyage, Boone is one of the first hundred colonists sent to permanently colonize Mars. His accomplishments and natural charm yield him an informal leadership role. John Boone is assassinated in the first chapter of Red Mars. The narrative then steps back to the first hundred's voyage to Mars aboard the spaceship Ares. Afterwards, his ideas continue as a point of reference for the remainder of the trilogy. Boone's character is complex. In one light, Boone is a stereotypically simple, heroic figure, an everyman hero: his first words on his first trip to Mars are "Well, here we are". He is almost uniformly cheerful and good-natured, and approaches everything he undertakes with hale bonhomie. But later in Red Mars, Robinson switches to Boone's point of view, rather than showing him through others' eyes. This section reveals that late in life, Boone is addicted to omegendorph, a fictional drug that is based on endorphins in the human brain. In addition, it reveals that at least some of his seeming simplicity might simply be an act designed to further his political goals. Overall, Boone is presented as larger-than-life — his flaws as well as his virtues. Assassinated by fundamentalists.
• Frank Chalmers, head of the American contingent. He is machiavellian in his use of power. However, his cynicism is later shown to be a form of self-defense; Chalmers is at least partly driven by a hidden idealistic side. Dies in a flooding catastrophe.
• Maya Toitovona, an emotional woman who is at the centre of a love triangle between Boone and Chalmers. Head of the Russian contingent. Toitovona begins as one of the Russian leaders, and becomes a powerful political force later on. After the deaths of Chalmers and Boone, she falls in love with Michel Duval. Suffers heavily from amnesia with growing age.
• Nadia Chernyshevski, a Russian engineer. She builds the first permanent habitation of Mars. In the later books she becomes a reluctant politician. Nadia is in love with Arkady Bogdanov. In Green Mars she falls in love with Art Randolf, with whom she eventually starts a family.
• Arkady Bogdanov, Russian. An engineer with anarchist/Marxist leanings. Like Boone, his political ideas weigh heavily on characters later in the book, his ideas continue to live as "Bogdanovism". In love with Nadia Chernyshevski, is killed during the first revolution, of 2061.
• Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, American physicist. Russell is a leader of the Green movement (a movement whose goal is to terraform Mars) and also a brilliant and creative scientist who suffers aphasia (likely Broca's aphasia) after suffering a stroke while being brutally tortured by government security forces in Green Mars. Secretly in love with Ann Clayborne. Saxifrage means "Stonebreaker" (Russell is a terraformer) and is the name for a plant that grows between stones.
• Ann Clayborne, American geologist, who wants Mars preserved in its pristine state. She becomes a leader of the Red movement which is dedicated to this goal. She is frequently seen as bitter. She has a hate-love relationship with Saxifrage Russell. Develops a split personality and modest appreciation for the "blue" Mars.
• Hiroko Ai, a Japanese expert on biology, agriculture, and ecological systems. It was Hiroko who smuggled Desmond 'Coyote' Hawkins onto the Ares (the two were friends and lovers as students in London). She is the charismatic leader of the "farm team", one of the important work groups and cliques among the first hundred. She thus becomes the focus of many of the trilogy's central themes. Most importantly, she teaches the importance of maintaining a respectful relation to one's planet. On Mars, this is called the Areophany. In the secret colony, Zygote, which Hiroko established, the first generation of children, the 'ectogenes', are all the product of artifical insemination outside of any human body; Hiroko uses her own ova as the female genetic material, and uses (often oblivious) male members of the first hundred to fertilize these eggs. She is seldom at the center of the narrative, but her influence is pervasive. Her profound absence is on the scale of John Galt in Atlas Shrugged or Harry Lime in The Third Man.
• Michel Duval, a French psychologist, assigned to monitor the psychological welfare of the First Hundred. Desperately wants to go back to Provence as he knew it. Falls in love with Maya Toitovna and dies after she displays signs of very heavy amnesia.
• Vlad Taneev, Russian biological scientist. He is the head of all medical treatment and research projects on Mars. He creates a gerontological treatment to stave off old age.
• Phyllis Boyle, American Christian geologist, who favors corporate control of Mars. She eventually sides against most of the first hundred with the UN Mars Agency and tortures Saxifrage Russel. She is killed in his rescue.
• Desmond "the Coyote" Hawkins, the Trinidadian stowaway. He is a friend and supporter of Hiroko, in addition to being a fervent anarchist. Present in Red Mars only as a shadowy figure who blends effortlessly into the Martian background, he isn't even identified as anything more than "the Coyote" until the beginning of Green Mars. He becomes a leading figure in the "underground," and an unofficial coordinator of a developing gift economy.

Since the trilogy covers over 200 years of human history, later immigrants and the children and grandchildren of the first hundred eventually become important characters in their own rights.

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• Nirgal, the son of Hiroko and the Coyote is raised communally by Hiroko and her followers. He is a good-natured wanderer who eventually becomes a political leader advocating ties with Earth.
• Jackie Boone, the granddaughter of Hiroko and John Boone (raised with Nirgal), emerges as an isolationist leader, presented as manipulative.
• Peter Clayborne, Ann's son, is an engineer and a "green."
• Arthur "Art" Randolph, a representative of the Praxis corporation sent to contact the Martian underground movement on a quasi-diplomatic mission. The Praxis Corporation is an attempt to create a system of "ecological capitalism" based on democratic corporations; like the other "metanationals," it takes on intensive economic and political ties with governments, but Praxis aims for partnerships, rather than exploitative relationships.

Other Characters

• Kasei, son of Hiroko and John Boone, father of Jackie Boone
• Zeyk Tuqa and his wife Nazik, Muslim nomads
• William Fort, founder of Praxis
• Zoya "Zo" Boone, daughter of Jackie, dies in a flying accident.
• Nikki, daughter of Nadia and Art