Customer Reviews

The Martians

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

On the odd chance that you've come here by accident, let me open up by saying that Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (consisting of Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) remains one of the greatest SF epics of all time, managing to combine a grand scope with highly emotional storytelling and a riveting plot, as well as a overarching concern for environmental issues. If you haven't read it, go out and buy all three books right now, because otherwise this book here will hold absolutely no interest for you at all. After he finished the trilogy Robinson apparently had some leftover thoughts and supplementary material he thought worthy of publishing and so this book is a collection of short stories and other pieces all relating to that great trilogy. The only thing is that a lot of this is hit and miss, with decent stories sitting next to somewhat useless pieces. The biggest problem here is for people like me who read the Mars trilogy years ago (about seven years ago, I think) and a lot of the better stories make references to events that happened in the novels themselves. And while this doesn't ruin the stories, the shorter stories lose some of their resonance because the reader doesn't grasp the whole context and people who have never read the novels will be totally lost. But a good majority of the meatier stories stand up quite well on their own (I like the baseball one, the original "Green Mars" story was neat, and a lot of the viginettes involving Coyote was well done) and make for quick, enjoyable reads that take the reader back to the glories of the trilogy. But a lot of the other stuff is just Robinson clearing out his notebook . . . a draft of the Martian constitution (followed by someone's notes on it), a brief piece with abstracts from Martian scientific journals, a long section with various poems of varying quality and a series of one or two page stories that just sort of sit there without really doing anything. But, as I said, the best stuff here reminds us why we loved the original trilogy in the first place (and almost made me want to go back and read it again) and you can just skim past the so-so stuff and move on. You may be doing more skimming than you might like, but there are some gems buried in here. If anything deserved a buyer beware, this would probably be it . . . the best time to read this is right after you finish the original trilogy so that most of this makes sense and you can extend the marvelous glow of the novels just a little bit longer. But for those looking for Robinson's best work, I'd go for the Orange County Trilogy and some of his other novels, that's where his genius really lies, while a book like this merely only shows you some aspects of it. I got this as a bargain book and that's probably the price you want to pay for it, anything more and you're going to feel ripped off. And I'll say this just one more time . . . go read the Mars trilogy! I can't put it any clearer than that.

Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy, consisting of RED MARS, GREEN MARS, and BLUE MARS is a major acheivement of science fiction. THE MARTIANS is a companion book that contains Robinson's early short stories about Mars, alternate plotlines, and even poems and an autobiographical vignette.

Although THE MARTIANS is meant to satisfy the reader's curiosity for certain aspects of the trilogy, that curiosity isn't very strong. I quickly grew bored with the stories of THE MARTIANS. In fact, some of the stories inside made me feel overloaded and less appreciative of the trilogy.

THE MARTIANS isn't really worth reading unless you have read and enjoyed the trilogy several times. Even then, it's not very impressive.

When I first saw some reviews for "The Martians," I was thoroughly discouraged. No one seemed to appreciate the stories. I went out and bought a copy, and I've been truly happy that I did. For readers looking for a continuation of the trilogy, this simply isn't it. While more familiar characters, such as Maya, the Coyote, and Michel all make appearances, this book does not continue the story line. Rather, it fills in cracks and provides detail work that an author cannot appropriately include in the course of a book. Many of the tales fall outside of the trilogy itself, which gives us the opportunity to really see the sense of community. "The Martians," was beautiful and gratifying in that it brought me back to a world that I once loved, but had allowed to fade from my memory. I jumped back and forth, reading stories in no particular order, and fell in love once again. I first read "Red Mars" as a freshman in high school. A great deal of the finer details of science were lost on me. The atmosphere of "The Martians" convinced me to reread the first book once more, and I'm absolutely satisfied with the second reading. I understood now so much more of the science of the novel, far better than I ever could have before. It truly gives me an appreciation of the lengths that Robinson went to in order to create his world of Mars. This collection of stories is truly successful in its goal: to give the reader a more intimate knowledge of the universe according to Robinson. I for one am grateful for the opportunity; it would be a wonderful place to live.

I read all three of "Red Mars," "Green Mars," and "Blue Mars," and, though a tad slow here and there, I liked them a lot, and use words like "exceptional" and "great" to desrcribe them to fellow sci-fi junkies. Recently while on a book-a-week sci-fi binge, I went shopping and saw "The Martians" and got all excited; bought it straight away. It took me longer than normal to get through this book, and I came close to tossing it in the recycling bin several times (except that I have this thing about never leaving a book unfinished). Anyway, the book is essentially a clip show of the other three, only worse: rather than repeat the best moments from the other books, they ... actually seem to have published a compilation of all the outtakes from the other books. Each story hit me with the same general impression: "this seems like something culled from one of the other Mars books, scraps from the edit room floor." And as one of the other reviewers mentioned, that thing at the end, "Purple Mars," was the biggest bunch of self-indulgent twaddle I've ever read. It might have even been interesting to read in New Yorker magazine or something, but it has no place in a sci-fi book (collection or otherwise).

So, where I was slightly miffed by Greg Bear's "Eon" series and some of its amazing similarities to Clarke's "Rama" (superficially anyway), at least those books were interesting, enjoyable, and brisk. With "The Martians," Robinson is far dirtier. He seems to have focused on making *more* money off the success of his trilogy, and has completely thumbed his nose at his Mars series fans in the process by tricking us into buying and reading painfully slow, horribly disconnected drivel. ...

To make matters worse, Kirkus and other reviewers actually praised the thing (on the back cover), which leads me to believe that respectable review sources cut established authors too much slack. If it were possible to revoke an author's earlier writing awards, I'd say "The Martians" would provide justifiable cause of action.

I tried for zero stars, but the review form forces me to pick something between 1 and 5.

I have read six or seven of Mr. Robinson's other books (I haven't read Antarctica, "Escape" or the last of the "Three Californias") and greatly enjoyed them all. I was therefore upset at having wasted my money during a quick stock up on SF books in Johannesburg Airport. This was mostly silly and detracts from the Mars Trilogy. The poems are especially silly. Read the Mars Trilogy instead....and any of his other books except this one.

If you made your way through the 2700 plus words of the trilogy than this is worth getting. For those who haven't it will certainly confuse. The science is great and the social comments throughout are very much worth future policy makers comtemplating. It's been two years since I read the trilogy and this book has helped me to recall much of it without having to read them again. A great author who has reintroduced me to science fiction - something I gave up on as a child. Take me to Mars!

Maybe I just didn't empathize enough with any of the characters in the Mars trilogy to care that much what happened to them or to make me want to know more about them. This is the first book in a long time that I've given up on. The first part seemed like a "Readers Digest" version of the first Mars book; what I thumbed through of the rest struck me as the writer's equivalent of an artist's sketch pad. If you're an aspiring writer, or you want to know what ideas the author toyed with before writing the books, I suppose it would be interesting. Beyond that, it did nothing for me.

I read the trilogy a few years ago, and enjoyed it.

This book requires total knowledge of all the characters from all the books. I didn't recognize half of them because there were hardly any introductions.

And it was rather boring. I put it down and give up on it for a few weeks, and then read it again for a few days before getting sick of it.

I hesitated over buying this one, after reading some of the reviews here, but I'm glad I bought it. It's true that it is uneven, a bit dull in parts, but I found many of the stories touching. The "alternate universe" stories were a little confusing at first, but I found them perhaps the most interesting parts of the book, providing a contrast to the main Mars books, showing what might have happened if the space program had lost its nerve and hesitated in its quest to go to Mars. And I enjoyed the looks into the author's life, into the process of writing.

The three books in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" are my absolute all-time-favorites. So, it comes as no surprise that when this book was published, I immediately snapped it up! However, I was definitely disappointed. The stories in "The Martians" are not of the same quality as the "Mars Series" and seem to be all the pieces that someone *wisely* recommended that he remove from the original stories. In fact, it didn't even seem like the same person had written "The Martians" ... but more like someone stole Kim Stanley Robinson's good name. Moral? Just because they publish it doesn't mean it's good. Pass on this one, it's not worth your money; stick to the "Mars Series" instead.