Green Mars (mars Trilogy, #2)

The second installment of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy picks up decades after the failed revolution of 2061, which ended the first novel. The surviving members of the First Hundred, the original colonists who arrived on Mars in 2027, are scattered across the planet, with some hiding in underground sanctuaries. Mars is governed by the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTA), a body controlled by powerful transnational corporations called metanationals. Terraforming, the process of making Mars habitable for humans, has continued despite the war, thickening the atmosphere and warming the planet. A new space elevator reconnects Mars to Earth.

The novel opens with Nirgal, a child born in Zygote, a hidden colony beneath the south polar ice cap founded by Hiroko Ai, the visionary biologist who preaches viriditas, the sacred green force of life. Nirgal grows up among roughly 124 residents, educated by rotating teachers including the fierce Maya Toitovna, the physicist Sax Russell, and Coyote (real name Desmond Hawkins), a trickster later revealed to be Nirgal's father. He possesses an unusual ability to regulate his body temperature and shares a complicated bond with Jackie Boone, Hiroko's granddaughter. When Simon, Peter's father, develops fatal leukemia, Nirgal donates bone marrow but cannot save him, and the death shatters his childhood security. A journey with Coyote across the southern highlands opens Nirgal's eyes to the wider world, including the Bogdanovist refuge inside Vishniac mohole, a massive drilled shaft housing one of the hidden communities run by the Bogdanovists, an underground faction. When the Zygote dome collapses from warming conditions, the community excavates a new shelter called Gamete, but Nirgal senses his future lies on the surface.

On Earth, Art Randolph, a 50-year-old American engineer and arbitrator, is recruited by William Fort, the founder of Praxis, and sent to Mars as a covert diplomat tasked with contacting the underground. Art works a cover job on the Tharsis slope and is effectively abducted into the underground when Coyote and Maya stage a rescue after his rover locks him out.

Meanwhile, Ann Clayborne, the geologist who has fought terraforming since the beginning, wanders the southern hemisphere in solitary despair. She narrowly survives a massive landslide and discovers 50 industrial platforms mining the northern permafrost to create a future ocean. Her devastation transforms into focused anger, and she joins the Reds, a loose coalition of anti-terraforming saboteurs who greet her as a hero.

Sax Russell, surgically altered and carrying a false Swiss passport as "Stephen Lindholm," infiltrates a biotech firm called Biotique in Burroughs, Mars's largest city. He designs plants for the glaciated regions and begins a secret affair with Phyllis Boyle, the former president of the Transitional Authority. At a major terraforming conference, Sax observes corporate interests corrupting scientific discourse. Coyote takes him to witness the aerial lens, a giant orbiting mirror melting the surface at 5,000 degrees Kelvin and releasing dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide. Phyllis eventually recognizes Sax and threatens to hand him over for interrogation. He punches her unconscious and flees but is arrested at the train station.

When word reaches the underground that Sax is being tortured at the security compound in Kasei Vallis, Coyote triggers catastrophic katabatic winds—powerful downslope air masses that rush off high terrain—using devices along the Great Escarpment. Under cover of the resulting hurricane, Michel Duval, the expedition's psychologist, and Maya infiltrate the facility. They find Sax strapped to an interrogation apparatus, his face beaten and electrodes on his shaved head. Maya discovers Phyllis operating the equipment and kills her with an explosive charge. The group escapes through the storm. Sax survives but is left with severe aphasia, a brain injury that leaves him able to understand language but struggling to speak.

As Sax recovers through months of therapy, Nirgal, Art, and their companions circumnavigate the planet, stopping at Bogdanovist sanctuaries. Art repeatedly advocates convening a congress of all underground groups. The idea gains support, and Nirgal, Art, and Nadia, a First Hundred engineer, tour diverse communities to promote it, visiting Sufi settlements, Bedouin caravans, and other outposts. Upon returning to Gamete, they find the settlement has been attacked by UNTA forces. The residents escape through a bolt-hole tunnel, collapsing both domes behind them. Hiroko insists the congress must proceed.

About 500 delegates from 50 groups gather at Dorsa Brevia, an enormous lava tunnel sanctuary managed by a matriarchal community. Workshops address economics, governance, terraforming, and revolutionary strategy. Vlad Taneev and Marina Tokareva, First Hundred scientists, present a dual economy combining regulated currency for necessities with a gift economy for surplus. The terraforming debate proves bitterly divisive, with Ann and Sax reprising their decades-old argument. Art and Nirgal draft a seven-point declaration affirming cultural diversity, individual rights, common stewardship of resources, and environmental limits. Fort arrives with a Praxis delegation, polarizing delegates between those who welcome Terran allies and isolationists. Hiroko closes the congress by walking naked and painted green through the crowd in a ritual of collective renewal. The declaration is ratified, though without agreement on methods for achieving independence.

In the following years, Sax secretly prepares for revolution. He and Peter Clayborne, Ann's son and a skilled pilot, destroy the aerial lens with missiles and move Deimos, one of Mars's moons, out of orbit to prevent its use as a military platform. Sax engineers increases in atmospheric oxygen, plants fire-prone species in strategic locations, and oversees weapons production at the Da Vinci Crater refuge. Maya settles in Odessa on the rim of Hellas Basin, organizing resistance cells among young natives. She wrestles with guilt after learning that Frank Chalmers, her former lover and a leader of the First Hundred, may have orchestrated the assassination of John Boone, the charismatic first explorer whose murder fractured the original colony. UNTA forces assault Sabishii, capital of the demimonde (the semi-hidden network of underground settlements), and Hiroko's inner circle disappears. Jackie Boone pushes for immediate rebellion, clashing violently with Maya, who insists on patience. Sax asks for 12 more months.

The trigger comes from Earth: The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, raising global sea levels by six meters and overwhelming Earth's attention. Sax contacts Nadia, now serving as the movement's coordinator, and they launch the revolution while Mars passes behind the sun relative to Earth, delaying military response. Sax's team destroys most orbiting weapons platforms, and resistance cells seize cities simultaneously. An incoming shuttle carrying reinforcements is deflected when debris is launched into its aerobraking path—the trajectory through Mars's upper atmosphere the shuttle requires to slow down and enter orbit. Sax ignites a firestorm in Kasei Vallis using the high-oxygen atmosphere he cultivated, destroying the security compound.

In Burroughs, over 80,000 people demonstrate in Princess Park. Nirgal declares Mars free and offers cooperation with Earth. Maya announces aspirational treaties with Switzerland, India, China, and Praxis, assertions that Art and Nadia plan to formalize. But Red commandos have seized the dike protecting Burroughs from the Isidis ice sea—a vast body of water created by ongoing northern terraforming operations that has flooded the low-lying Isidis Basin, held at bay from the city by a massive earthen barrier—and fighting triggers explosives that breach it. Floodwater pours toward the city. Nadia and Sax execute an emergency plan: Half a million carbon dioxide filter masks are distributed, the tent walls are cut open, and 200,000 residents walk into the thin Martian air, marching 73 kilometers uphill to Libya Station through a freezing night.

The evacuation succeeds. In the final scene, the survivors of the First Hundred gather in the last train car as Burroughs's mesas stand like islands in rising floodwater. They discuss the uncertain future: Earth in crisis, the elevator still contested, Hiroko's fate unknown, a government yet to be built. Michel says they are free to try for the first time. Coyote urges them forward to join the celebration, and together they go.