White Mars or, The Mind Set Free

...Adiss and Penrose have delivered a fairly impenetrable counter argument to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Maybe he is right in saying that Robinson dismissed the 'Red' (or I guess Adiss would call in White) argument for humanity's treatment of the planet but he doesn't present it in a particularly engaging way. Without the connection to Robinson's work, I don't think I would have thought it worth my time to be honest. While the novel is certainly intellectually challenging I found the prose rather stiff and incapable of conveying the passion Jefferies must have felt about creating a new society. The characterization is pretty uniform, each of the character delivering their part of the tale in a detached and almost academic style. White Mars is clearly the work of a great intellect (or maybe I should say two great intellects), but, without having read any of his other books, I do get the impression we are not seeing Aldiss at the top of his abilities here.

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