Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
93% positive over last 12 months
Usually ships within 4 to 5 days.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.


BLUE MARS (MARS, NO 3) Paperback – January 1, 1997
Kim Stanley Robinson (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
Price | New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial |
Mass Market Paperback
"Please retry" | $5.00 | $1.35 |
- Kindle
$8.99 Read with Our Free App -
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial - Hardcover
$10.01 - Paperback
$7.00 - Mass Market Paperback
$8.99 - Audio CD
$48.75
Enhance your purchase
- Print length761 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSpectra
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1997
- ISBN-100553573357
- ISBN-13978-0553573350
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- ASIN : B000P18YV6
- Publisher : Spectra (January 1, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 761 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553573357
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553573350
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,786,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,146 in Exploration Science Fiction
- #18,696 in Space Operas
- #28,422 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica--for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program. He lives in Davis, California.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Blue Mars ties up the trilogy very neatly: the ideas started in Red Mars continue on toward their logical ends. I find that I miss reading the arguments and adventures of what remains of the First 100(+1).
The book isn't perfect: The segments on Earth drag on, it's never explained why the scientific communities on Earth and Mars don't seem to cooperate at all, and I really would have liked to have gotten a few dozen more pages about exactly how and why Hiroko started Zygote.
I feel like we completed this long journey and it was nice to see the first 100(+1) changing over time and becoming closer as they all get older. The scene with Sax and Maya coming up with new colors was very sweet, and wouldn't have worked without the first two and a half books to make the scene work.
Nirgal seems.. listless in the book, which is kind of a shame. But it is realistic. It seemed like the author didn't know what to do with Jackie, and the only options were political assassination or "I have to leave the planet now." We were clearly supposed to dislike
All in all this was one of my favorite hard sci fi series of all time. I'll really miss everyone.
I’ve read Sci-Fi voraciously since 1964. To me, this series seems prophetic. Perhaps some of the science is a bit dated, being conceived and written in the 1990s. We know a lot more now about the dangers and challenges we may encounter in our efforts to expand our reach into our solar system.
All that not withstanding, I believe we (humanity) will overcome those obstacles. Maybe we could even learn to live together more harmoniously and efficiently, as conceived here in this series.
I believe in the power of human ingenuity and creativity. We have a chance to truly find our place in the universe before we destroy ourselves. This series outlines one way that could come to be.
The strength of the series, in its sweeping scope, is its insights into political science as it plays out on an exceptionally large cast of well-developed characters. By means of a device available only to SciFi writers, the characters have access to life-extending DNA modifications which enables them to bear witness to events over the span of a couple of centuries. Some may see this as a contrivance, but this life extension exercise is so plausibly interwoven into the warp and weft of the story strucutre that it didn't bother me at all.
Robonson writes really beautifully, with extended (some might say over-extended) landscape descriptions, local and global geography, and what appears to be an encyclopedic knowledge of geology. The physics gets a bit fanciful in the later volumes, much less so early on. Whjat really drives the novel, though, is the conflicts between characters and institutions, both of which continue to change over time. You've got sex. You've got romance. You've got the love of nature, the quest for power, and the reactions of those who don't like it. What more could you want?
I would given this five stars but for a few annoying flaws. As the saga goes on, and the author is obviously tiring, you find more errors creeping in: Character names misspelled, plot lines set up and then left unresolved, a character dying and then reappearing with no explanation, small words missing here and there. Evidently the editor(s) got as tired as the author.
Still, on balance, a good read, if not quite as exciting and engaging as Red Mars.
Top reviews from other countries

Like the first two books, Blue Mars is not your usual sc-fi. It's the story of the people who came and made it home; of their children, and their children's children.
The language is rich with detailed descriptions of the science and technology and biology. My vocabulary was sorely lacking, thank goodness for Kindle word look-up, keep a good dictionary handy if reading the physical book. Here are a few examples:
anamnesis
vicinal
tubulin dimers
mentation
plenum
eskaton
xeriscape
thassalocracy
However lots of typos, is this the Kindle digitisation process?
Highly recommended.

I read the first two books in the trilogy in hard copy and did not find these kind of errors.

"Blue Mars" as the title suggests is set on a fully terraformed Mars. The atmosphere has thickened and heated up and the ice seas have melted and created a hydrosphere similar to Earth. The masks and walkers have now been disposed of. The scientific substance of the book now concentrates on developing the longevity treatment, ecopoesis and the psychological difficulties of coping with living for 200 years plus.
I didn't find "Blue Mars" to be as fascinating and exciting as the first two books of the trilogy and was a bit overlong. Perhaps that was due to over familiarity with the setting and characters and it was only when Nirgal and Zo featured heavily that "Blue Mars" had a character of its own and came to life , but unfortunately most of the book concentrated on the First Hundred whose lifes work was more or less complete by the end of "Green Mars". I would have liked to have read more about "The Accelerando" instead. I also didn't like the prolonged ending to "Blue Mars"; I thought it was lacking in impact somewhat and didn't bring the Trilogy to the spectacular end it deserved.
However "Blue Mars" is still a wonderful book, full of impressive and credible scientific detail, and if Mars is to be colonised then this trilogy is a perfect guidebook for its terraformation. However the timeframe for the colonisation set out by Robinson is slightly over-optimistic I think ; maybe by a hundred years or so. I cant see antelope roaming the forests of Mars until the 23rd Century at least ! Although technology is advancing all the time.
As I read through the Mars Trilogy, I couldnt help but think that science, in its entirety, the geology,biology,physics,chemistry and all its subdivisions , is nothing more than Man progressively trying to get into the mind of God, to be God. They are a very humanist and rationalist series of novels, however they promote a form of intellectual elitism. Science is worshipped,science can provide the answers to everything and highly intelligent elitists know best. There is no room for religion or the supernatural in this vision.
"Blue Mars" is a must read for those who have read the first two books, it would be incomprehensible if you haven't. It is a fitting conclusion to a remarkable series of novels. It is also easy to read ; I raced through its 800 pages in 9 days, so theres no excuse for not reading the whole series now !


that stuff was just a footnote to the main bit about forming a new govt, and the new ecology.
I stopped caring about Phyllis and her one dimensional "Mars is a national park" stick in the muddedness.
I had to skip Michael Duval's bloody sentimental holiday in his home region. It felt like a pointless dead end. I didn't see him as enough of a key character to devote so much page space to his attachment to his home town.
More long winded descriptions. These books really needed a handful of sketches in the back, maybe.
These books deserve a set of mini series though, say 10 episodes for each book.
OK, I'm going back to my short and sharp Kindle self publishing sets.