Blue Mars is a fitting end to the series and really could not have been better. While we do not nominate it now for a 7, as we mentioned before in our review of Red Mars, public acclimation may yet elevate it despite our petty quarrels with the politics and economics. Where these errors “bogged down” Green Mars, to borrow the term from Publisher’s Weekly, Blue Mars has ascended out of the technically accurate and somehow achieved a level of allegory and myth that permeates the entire work. Where before, characters achieved the mythic, now the entire setting has entered that realm—amazingly without loss of the technical merit and detail that has been the hallmark of the series. Because of its new foundation in the imagination, we forgive the economic flaws since it is a proper place to speculate on such idealistic issues. And as we noted above, he makes us believe.

 

The book opens with Ann. Still alive, still implacable, still attempting to save Mars. She deserves our pity. Old Mars, as it were, is now relegated to isolated, high-altitude or enclosed sectors that feel almost like aboriginal Americans herded on to reservations. Yet still she lives there, striving to preserve it as pristinely as possible, and continuing her research. Heroic Sax will continue to try and understand her and her motivations. Much of the book is devoted to this endeavor and it is one of the most touching plotlines in all science fiction to watch a human being devote so much energy and invest so much time only to understand another human being. Sax Russell, more than any other character, has become the ideal human in many respects.

 

The First Hundred are now relics as generation upon generation are being born upon Mars and remaking it into their home—no longer a colony but a nation. We see the political machinations now in a different light: not so much grasping for power but attempting to balance the various desires of its citizens. It is an example of human beings striving to actually “get it right.”

 

Earth is in peril: the flooding has caused many problems and Martians visit this planet for the first time and see how their efforts have become folklore back “home.” We see Earth rising out of its corruption and expend itself in longevity programs and further colonization. There is a striking image of approaching Earth with several space elevators spinning off the surface and we can almost feel the planet hurling itself into space with a last gasp.

 

We’re given long digressions about life, living it meaningfully in the face of virtual immortality, and how to continue to face death. We’re given a view of how people might choose to live in a place where technology has solved so many problems, the limits of human potential have been expanded a hundredfold, and the last inherited morals offered by religions have been shed (it is an atheist book in conception).

 

Best of all, we begin to see the colonization of other planets and moons. Each new area pregnant with the same possibilities and stories that were given by Mars. Each time the science merging seamlessly with the imagination and the myth. The Mars trilogy has never been about action, adventure, love, hatreds, or political conflict--though all of this is present. It has been about the human condition and the shape it will take as it goes through the crucible of truly “leaving the nest” for the first time in history. Robinson has finally reached the zenith of this sort of speculation in this, his final volume. While it lacks the urgency of Red Mars, while it suffers from some of the same problems of reality we find in Green Mars, it also seems that Robinson has at last found his voice and his vision.