Red Mars

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death.

Red Mars literally documents the process of building a new human society on a distant, hostile planet. Careful, meticulous scientific detail—including formulae and diagrams—demonstrates the complexity of constructing human habitation on Mars.

Building a new society isn’t easy, the novel proposes, but the best and brightest that humanity has to offer can serve as a launching pad for gradual human colonization. This process takes many years and a vast sum of money. The technology and resources that go into building a society on Mars represent humanity’s great investment in Martian colonization. As a result, the society built on Mars represents a globalized investment by humanity as a species. In addition to the science, the economics of the building process and the social investment of the UN suggest that the colonization requires the collaboration of everyone on Earth. Red Mars portrays extraplanetary global colonization as an effort to focus human intellect and resources on investing in humanity’s future.

However, the society being built on Mars is more than just the infrastructure. After only a short time on Ares, Arkady points out that he and his fellow members of the 100 have an opportunity to determine the nature of this new society.