In 2026 the Ares carries a hundred colonists to Mars, chosen for competence and psychological resilience and immediately revealing that neither quality survives contact with other people. The First Hundred include Frank Chalmers, who understands politics and trusts nobody, John Boone, the first man to walk on Mars and consequently a figure nobody can argue with, Maya Toitovna, caught between them, Sax Russell, who wants to make the planet green, Ann Clayborne, who wants it left exactly as it is, and Hiroko Ai, who has plans she shares with no one. What follows is the whole first century of settlement compressed into one enormous novel: the building of Underhill, the space elevator, the arrival of transnational corporations who regard Mars as an asset and the colonists as staff, the drilling and the mohole and the first great argument about terraforming, and finally a revolution in 2061 that goes exactly as badly as such things do. Robinson gives the geology as much attention as the politics and is genuinely undecided about the ethics of transformation, and the book's landscapes have not been surpassed in the genre.
