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Blue Mars Discussion

"Almost done with Blue Mars and while I liked the series, I don't think it won any awards for writing style or skill. What it did win for was scope and detail. Even if not all the detail is 100% correct. Much of the tech stuff reads like it was taken out of a scientific american magazine. Still a good long book with some good (and bad) ideas." - Ryan 6/98

"As I now near the end of Blue Mars, the pace has accelerated (horse nearing the barn after a long ride?). I don't at all begrudge Robinson his Hugos/Nebula for this work. His tackling of this socio-political-cultural drama is, in fact, phenomenal. How could it do justice to the subject and NOT have the reader get bogged down, from time to time? Thanks for the website! You'll have me out there buying more SF - just to read the comments." - Ellen 6/29/98

Thanks for the encouragement. It's just that there are so many other great books I would rather read first. I'm sure I'll get to it one of these days though. Steve 7/8/98

"Thinking about it I can understand your reaction to the Robinson Mars books. My wife has this reading compulsion in that once she starts a book she forces herself to read it to the end and she counts multi book series as one book! By the time she got to Blue Mars. It was complete torture for her. On the other hand Blue Mars was bliss for me because by then the characters were real people to me and my brain had rewired itself so that I was totally tuned to Robinson's style.
" ­ R. Clark 1/23/98

"Was a late-comer to the Mars series. Gulped down Red, cantered through Green, now plodding through Blue. Yet, like the guy's wife with a "compulsion to finish", I am determined to get through it, primarily because I now have the equivalent of a great-aunt's affection for the characters. Would still like to know: Does Maya ever get over her personality disorder? Does Hiroko ever quit playing hide and go seek? Does Michel ever get a life? What I could care less about: Do Nirgal and Jackie ever get (back) together? Is there a # 3,006 on the list of ways to form a government? What disappoints me: The strong start on the use of robotics in Red, which seems to fizzle into nothing by Blue; i.e., not seeing a whole lot of technological progress here, except certain minor refinements in walkers, and, of course, the Treatment!! But hey, it's my obligation to finish the book, and I'm having fun enough .... " - Ryan H Neve 6/23/98

"Most of what Robinson is talking about is way over my head, but I found two glaring errors within two pages of Blue Mars. On p. 599 he says the current caused by the Coriolis effect in the southern hemisphere is clockwise. WRONG -- it's counter-clockwise. And on p. 600, he has Maya climb up in the halyards of a sailboat. Lots of luck Maya; the halyards are the lines that raise the sails. Maya could climb the shrouds, if the shrouds are fitted with ratlines, but not the halyards. Mistakes like this make me question the accuracy of everything else in the book.

On p.652 Robinson says, "the rods in the retina tend to see best in the three primaries." WRONG! The cones, not the rods percieve colors and the colors they perceive are vermillion, green and violet, NOT the three primaries but closer to the three secondaries. He goes on to say that a green and red spotlight combine to form a color but he doesn't know what and says, "Look at an artist's color wheel." WRONG AGAIN! The color made by a red and green spot is yellow, the same color your eye sees if the vermillion and green cones in the retina are stimulated. An artists color wheel will show the results of mixing pigments, not light. He is confusing the subtractive process of reflected light, in which pigments mask out all but the color you see and the additive process, in which light adds to light, the "secondary" colors blending to create the primary " colors. Does Robinson research anything or does he just rely on his own faulty and vague recollections?" ­ Wright 12/10/97

Thanks, Wright ­ but you're not helping me overcome my resistance to reading this book! ­ Steve 12/11/97

"I think Kim winning again means that he has more friends than anyone else. It's also a new record. Nobody has ever had a trilogy win an award for each book. The closest was Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead  but the third one didn't win anything. This also proves that Orson Scott Card was right about new ideas not winning awards. Since they couldn't give the award to a new book, it had to go to part three of an already aging story." - Rocco Smith 11/30/97

Please email comments to stroy@jademountain.com

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