Blue Mars was published by HarperCollins in 1996 and won the Hugo Award (making Robinson the only author to win the Hugo for all three volumes of a trilogy). Mars has achieved political independence; the terraforming has progressed to the point where open water exists on the surface; and a new Martian society — drawing on the constitutional principles debated in Green Mars — is emerging.
Robinson uses the final volume to explore questions the first two deferred: What happens to identity when longevity treatments allow people to live for centuries? (The surviving First Hundred are now over 200 years old; their memories are degrading.) What does Mars owe Earth, which is flooding due to Antarctic ice-sheet collapse? How does a utopian society handle its own internal contradictions once the external enemy (corporate control) is removed?
Sax Russell, the terraformer, now questions whether the complete transformation of Mars was justified. Ann Clayborne, the preservationist, begins to accept the new landscape. The novel ends with a meditation on mortality — even with longevity treatments, the original colonists are dying — and with the sense that the Mars trilogy’s real subject was never Mars but the question of whether human beings can build a just society.
Collecting Blue Mars
First edition (HarperCollins, London, 1996): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $40–$100
- US first edition (Bantam): $20–$50
- Complete Mars trilogy, all firsts: $300–$700