Kim Stanley Robinson – Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy, Book 3)
The conclusion to the trilogy. With Mars now politically independent and boasting a population of about 12 million, Robinson devotes substantial time to constitutional design and how to design a political system from scratch. Politics and economics are clearly not his expertise, but just going through the exercise with him and his characters is a lot of fun. About a quarter of the way through, some of the characters take a trip to Earth for diplomatic purposes. A few of them are among the Earth-born First Hundred to go Mars, and they don’t feel as though they’ve returned home. Nirgal, a second-generation Martian, has his own troubles adapting to Earth’s gravity and open atmosphere.
Robinson also devotes a lot of time to aging. Most of the characters take longevity treatments, and members of the First Hundred are a good 140-150 years old at the beginning of the book, with their apparent physiological ages topping out at about 70. Some of them make it well past 200. But there are tradeoffs to longevity that affect their memories, both short-term and long-term, as well as a number of sudden deaths.
There are also points where beauty and science mix. Descriptions of imported and genetically engineered Earth and plant wildlife are surprising and comforting at the same time. As far as sunsets go, Mars’ atmosphere extends much higher than Earth’s due to low gravity, and has lots of light-reflecting dust. Combined with atmospheric thickening from terraforming, and the characters get to admire sunsets that linger far longer than they do on Earth.
Inertia Wins! 