Green Mars was published by HarperCollins in 1993 and won the Hugo Award. Set in the decades after the failed 2061 revolution, it follows the generation born on Mars — the “nisei” — as they grow up in a world being transformed by terraforming. Atmospheric pressure is rising; engineered organisms are spreading across the surface; the first patches of green appear.
Robinson focuses on Nirgal, a boy raised in a hidden underground colony (Zygote, beneath the South Polar ice cap), son of two of the First Hundred. Nirgal becomes a kind of Martian Johnny Appleseed — traveling the surface, connecting disparate communities, embodying the possibility of a genuinely Martian identity. Meanwhile, Art Randolph (a naive Earthling sent by the transnats as a negotiator) becomes an inadvertent mediator between factions.
The novel’s political argument: Mars’s revolution against Earth-based corporate control will succeed only if the colonists can agree on a constitutional framework first. Robinson devotes extended sections to constitutional debates — how to balance individual liberty with ecological responsibility, how to prevent private accumulation of common resources, how to structure governance across a planet.
Collecting Green Mars
First edition (HarperCollins, London, 1993): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $60–$150
- US first edition (Bantam): $30–$80