The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson’s massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. ‘The ultimate in future history’ Daily Mail

The Future History of Mars - Part One

1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the Moon.

2020: John Boone becomes the first man to set foot on Mars.

2027: The first mass-landing arrives on Mars.

It's the greatest challenge mankind has ever faced.

In 2027, the Ares, the biggest space-worthy craft ever built by man, reaches high orbit around Mars. Inside is a crew who will become the first one hundred people to land on the planet's surface.

Among them are the Russian team, led by the magnetic Maya Toitovna and radical socialist Arkady Bogdanov with their pragmatic engineer Nadia Cherneshevsky; Hiroko Ai - a Japanese biologist; and the Americans, led by Boone and the ambitious Frank Chalmers. Their mission: terraform a frozen wasteland with no atmosphere into a new Eden.

Their mission must succeed. The future of human civilization depends on it.

The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson’s massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. ‘The ultimate in future history’ Daily Mail

Mars – the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind’s dreams of space conquest.

From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists – hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert – Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.

It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot on the red planet, factions are forming, tensions are rising and violence is brewing… for civilization can be very uncivilized.