Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson

I've finally finished this epic trilogy! Like the first two books, "Blue Mars" follows different members of the First Hundred, the first people to land and live on Mars, and who started (or fought against) the terraforming project. Earth is in shambles, since the melting of half of the Antarctican ice shelf caused the sea levels to rise significantly, and their desire to relocate refugees to Mars causes no end of problems for the new Martians. Meanwhile, the planet is quickly changing, there are gardens and farms and wild animals of all sizes, and vast seas. Another problem: they've invented a way to cure old age, so people are living well into their 200s, albeit with some problems with their memories, and now population pressures are very sudden. Robinson describes all these things with incredible attention to scientific detail, so much so that some parts are simply a blank for me, as I can't understand them as well as I would like. I also started to notice that Robinson writes very long sentences, and very long paragraphs, with lots of colons and semi-colons. Generally, I don't mind that kind of style, but in a 750-page book, it becomes a bit wearing. But the research he must have done is staggering; I'm so glad I read these books, and look forward to recommending them to other hard sci-fi readers.

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