Moving Mars

The young may not remember Mars of old, under the yellow Sun, its cloud-streaked skies dusted pink, its soil rusty and fine, its inhabitants living in pressurized burrows and venturing Up only as rite of passage or to do maintenance or tend the ropy crops spread like nests of intensely green snakes over the wind-scoured farms. That Mars, an old and tired Mars filled with young lives, is gone forever. Now I am old and tired, and Mars is young again. Our lives are not our.

Own, but by God, we must behave as if they are. When I was young, what I did seemed too small to be of any consequence; but the shiver of dust, we are told, expands in time to the planet-sweeping storm ... Casseia Majumdar was a daughter of one of Mars' oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples - the extended family syndicates that had colonized the red planet. But her life was changed forever by the student protest of 2171. Those brief days of idealism forged bonds.

That would last a lifetime, and set the stage for a more dramatic act of revolution than anyone could have imagined. Charles Franklin, too, was caught up in those days of passionate youth. A brilliant young physicist with a deep love for his native planet, he was forced to leave his world behind to gain the training he needed. And in those years, the political distance between Earth and Mars was growing wider than the empty reaches of interplanetary space. Moving Mars is.

Greg Bear's brilliant conception of humanity's colonization of the red planet, with lovingly painted details and a grand historical sweep, embellishing an audacious scientific speculation.