Comment by glenstein

6 hours ago

Currently reading Blue Mars, the third and final book in the trilogy. It's amazingly fascinating but also exhausting. I say with full seriousness it may be best to read this with a very specific high resolution full color map of Mars on your wall somewhere.

If anything KSR is not giving himself as much credit as he deserves, as personal AIs show up in ways that are remarkably salient and similar to what we're currently seeing. And he talks about advances in genetics that parallel what we're figuring out with CRISPR at least to some degrees. The biggest "error" is the preoccupation with a Paul Ehrlich-style population boom, but by the same token it reveals that the book is a window into the time it was made.

If any ambitious and aspiring science novelists are reading this, I would love for someone to be the Kim Stanley Robinson of Venus and tell the story of colonization there, aspiring to the same bar of technical specificity that KSR had for Red Mars.

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glenstein

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simonbarker87  6 hours ago

Good on you, exhausting is the right word I’d think. Red Mars was the book that killed my enthusiasm for reading for nearly a year. Something about it bored me to tears and yet, I kept reading (my fault) I think I gave up at 60%.

I feel like I should like it, I’ve read everything my Neal Stephenson so I’m not averse to hefty books

  • glenstein  5 hours ago

    I think I was in a similar boat and where in doubt, I think I powered through for completionist sake. But it's possible you paused right before some of the most interesting stuff in the whole book.

    It's not a spoiler to note that the it begins with a flash forward that talks about the fate of a major character. Some of the most interesting stuff starts happening to them and it comes full circle in a way that leads up to that flash forward. And mercifully the constant mentions of regolith lessen the deeper into the series you get.