Red Mars, by Kim Stanely Robinson

If Star Wars is a fairy tale, this is a car manual. I mean that in a good way. 

The story follows a big group of scientists as they venture to the red planet and start the difficult process of making it a home for humans. There is a lot of science stuff jammed into this novel that may be boring if you’re not a fan of tech-talk. But there are enough human characters and human drama that help make the tech-talk engaging. And the tech-talk doesn’t sound like the Star Trek gibberish, but actual, real-ish science that could (maybe) really work. 

What I liked most about the book is its somewhat hopeful respect for science. Science seems to solve all the problems. Need to heat up the Martian atmosphere? Use little windmill things. Problem solved! Need to build a giant space elevator? Just set up a fancy 3D printer on an asteroid that eats rocks and spits out usable materials in a long chain. Boom. Solved. 

Speaking of space elevators, there is a scene involving a space elevator disaster that blew my mind in terms of scope. I won’t spoil it, but this book does a great job of explaining the vast size of these science machines. 

Colonizing Mars seems like a real possibility in this book. And if we colonize Mars, then we can colonize the moons of Jupiter, distant planets and, eventually, Narnia. 

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