06-05-2003 03:30									#61
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Starchild,
wow, it's been a while since we talked. How are you these days? Fabulous, from your sig Excellent!

The command comes from the need for heavy machinery for conversion of the raw energy (sunlight) into, for example, portable energy. Hydrogen peroxide stores a lot of energy in liquid form (about 200 kJ/mole), which means you can take it with you and use it piece meal.

	06-05-2003 03:34									#62
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Cyber, I'm gooood. I can't remember if you're still on my ICQ/Trillian list. I'll have to check.

Let's see, what have I been up to.... Finished highschool in Canada and moved to the UK for pre-uni Sixth Form. I'm currently the darling student of my chemistry teachers and right now, I'm hoping to get into Edinburgh University the year after next to study biochemistry. I've got major exams coming up on a few weeks, my job sucks, and I drink like a fish. I'm 99% out to the people I know and I get more fabulous by the day.

You?

	06-05-2003 03:47									#63
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I'm great! I finished my PhD (in four years, thanks to the incredibly dullness of Indiana), and I'm now at Caltech. Just got my second promotion since I got here about a year ago, so it's going quite well

Only drawback of Caltech is how small and conservative it is... Especially for being in LA. Half the people here thinks I'm a lunatic just for owning a see through shirt...

Edinburg, you say? Why? Pretty town, I've heard Don't know anything about the uni itself.

Need ahy help with your chemistry, feel free to ask Dr. Gnu.

	06-05-2003 04:12									#64
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I am a carbon copy of Sax, I can't make good jokes even if my life depended on it.

I thought the genetic aging treatment was kind of cool.

	06-05-2003 04:24									#65
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Cyber, Starchild: Now, now now... let's break up this how ya doin fest and get back to the book .

Cyber: Thanks for the elucidation. I think that simply because everything isn't explained in the book, doesn't mean Robinson made up totally unrealistic stuff.

	06-05-2003 06:05									#66
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Odin, interesting sidenote: When Robinson wrote the book, this was considered an incredibly hot and promising topic in the science community. These little things called telomers were thought to be the sole cause of aging, and if we could add on more telomers to our cells via a retroviral vector, we would be young again.

Then in 1998 or so scientists managed to actually do this to mice, but found that it had very little effect... There is something else going on in your cells that we still haven't figured out.

I can't say for sure whether robinson based his idea on this research, but it fits quite well.

	06-05-2003 06:05									#67
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Imran, hey, what are you doing with that fist?!

Sorry, back on track now

	06-05-2003 06:06									#68
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Che, was it you who mentioned antarctica? Either way, robinsons latest book is sort of a "mini red mars", set in antarctica. Quite decent, although not as good as RM.

	06-05-2003 10:23									#69
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Lets talk about the problems inherant when you have a small group of 'equals' over a long period of time . Of course they'll faction off! Without strong leadership, they go their own ways and work to undermine others. Perhaps with strong leadership these things still would have occured, but at a much lesser pace, IMO.

	06-05-2003 11:29									#70
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Read a good chunk of the series a while ago. I remember liking the first a lot since so much was happening without it dragging and I liked how the revolution had a good leftist tinge rather than being a rip-off of the American revolution as usually happens with revolutions in sci-fi books.

*SEQUEL SPOILER AHEAD*



















































I threw the book across the room and gave up after the second revolution where after all the hard work, all the cool (literally) underground commies, after all the social change all the revolution ends up producing is a constitution that isn't anything more interesting than an especially weenie form of Social Democracy.
bah!

	06-05-2003 12:57									#71
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quote: Originally posted by CyberGnu Static, you mentioned fuel for Phobos missions?

Actually, I didn't mention the fuel. This I liked. I have no problem the technology in the novel (beyond thinking it's badly described and was a little too deus ex machina for my taste.)

My gripe is that more time should have been spent describing the terraforming equipment and not who was schtupping who* behind it. Robinson I'll admit did some good research here. A shame he didn't bother to share it with the rest of us.

And thanks for your excellent technical contributions to the thread.

* Or should that be "whom"? I never know...

	06-05-2003 13:05									#72
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quote: Originally posted by CyberGnu "familiariy breeds contempt" Not in my experience... I work at Caltech, and regularly run into at least two recent nobel prize winners. Going to ignore a seminar by Watson in an hour, actually. But my familiarity with them doesn't in any way breed any contempt... Watson is a good example: he hasn;t done any research in years, but I still respect the man very much. He was a pioneer in the field, and when he speaks people listen.

OK, after reading JohnT's and your comments and thinking about it for a while, perhaps I'll soften my position on this point.

BUT THAT'S AS FAR AS I'LL GO!

	06-05-2003 13:21									#73
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quote: [small] Originally posted by CyberGnu[/small] "familiariy breeds contempt" Not in my experience... I work at Caltech, and regularly run into at least two recent nobel prize winners. Going to ignore a seminar by Watson in an hour, actually. But my familiarity with them doesn't in any way breed any contempt... Watson is a good example: he hasn;t done any research in years, but I still respect the man very much. He was a pioneer in the field, and when he speaks people listen.

Heh! Funny you should say this because I have exactly the contrary opinion. I too know a few Nobel laureates (and a few Field medalists) and once you get to know them, they are either complete shits or pretty ordinary.

In fact, the only exceptions to this I have met are Witten (who is a Feild medalist) and t'Hoft.

I wouldn't say that familiarity breeds comtempt, but it definitely makes you realise that they **** like all the rest of us.

	06-05-2003 13:28									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Rogan Josh Heh! Funny you should say this because I have exactly the contrary opinion. I too know a few Nobel laureates (and a few Field medalists) and once you get to know them, they are either complete shits or pretty ordinary. In fact, the only exceptions to this I have met are Witten (who is a Feild medalist) and t'Hoft. I wouldn't say that familiarity breeds comtempt, but it definitely makes you realise that they **** like all the rest of us.

OK, I'm changing my opinion back.

	06-05-2003 13:59									#75
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Rogan, actually, one of them is a complete ****, but I still respect him

Knowing that they defecate just like you and me doesn't really do anything to that, in my opinion... Since it is a professional reverence. I wouldn't dream of asking them for advice on my personal life...

	06-05-2003 14:00									#76
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Static, thanks

	06-05-2003 17:57									#77
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Hey! A mind once changed can never change again!

Static, it is obvious that you wanted more of a blueprint than an novel and you are upset because Robinson didn't give you one. As KSR writes it, he leaves too much of the technology to what David Brin calls "hand-waving" - just making it appear and asking the reader to accept it.

What would have been your reaction had he just added a century to all the dates? Knowing that it wasn't so close to "today", would you allow more leniency on how in-depth he went into the technology?

Sorry, but that's why they call it fiction. You want a real world plan for colonizing Mars, maybe they'll have something at the JPL or NASA sites.

I really enjoy books with shifting viewpoints, and unlike some of the others in this thread, I think that Robinson used this technique effectively. I was kind of resigned to the novel being Maya's story when I got the pleasure of being shifted to Nadia's perspective.

I kind of chuckled when I got to the personality grid... I appreciate an author who is honest and ballsy enough to tell us that he uses a formula to develop his characters!

	06-05-2003 19:26									#78
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My favorite Red Mars scene just surfaced in my brain, the bit where one of that characters goes over all of the requirements to be one of the first 100 and explain how many of the blatantly contradict each other (ie not having an obsessive personality and being incredibly obessed with going to Mars were both necessary) which meant that to get on board all of the crew needed to be fundamentally mendacious or insane
That bit alone makes up for a lot, especially as pretty soon I've got to convince the State Dept. that I love my country but want to get a job that will get me anywhere but here as soon as possible...

	07-05-2003 00:50									#79
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quote: Originally posted by JohnT Hey! A mind once changed can never change again!

Sorry, I ride the tide of ideas.

quote: Static, it is obvious that you wanted more of a blueprint than an novel and you are upset because Robinson didn't give you one. As KSR writes it, he leaves too much of the technology to what David Brin calls "hand-waving" - just making it appear and asking the reader to accept it.

This "hand-waving" business is just shorthand for sloppy exposition skills, which is exactly my problem with most current science fiction. This is acceptable for most science fiction, because most sci-fi authors don't try to pass themselves off as technical writers, but it has moved into hard sci-fi as well. It simply isn't adequate to drop in the names of scientific processes/devices and let the reader fill in the blanks.

quote: What would have been your reaction had he just added a century to all the dates? Knowing that it wasn't so close to "today", would you allow more leniency on how in-depth he went into the technology?

The dates are largely irrelevant, since Robinson doesn't bother to tell us what year it is anyway until midway through the novel (unless I missed it the first time). More sloppiness on his part.

quote: Sorry, but that's why they call it fiction. You want a real world plan for colonizing Mars, maybe they'll have something at the JPL or NASA sites.

I'll check there.

quote: I really enjoy books with shifting viewpoints, and unlike some of the others in this thread, I think that Robinson used this technique effectively. I was kind of resigned to the novel being Maya's story when I got the pleasure of being shifted to Nadia's perspective.

I thought the shift in perspective from Maya to Nadia was handled rather clumsily. And it doesn't really help that most of the character setup in the book is done fram Maya's POV, when Nadia makes clear that Maya's views cannot be trusted. It all works out though, because all the characters are generic stereotypes anyway.

And how do you reconcile Maya's descriptions of Frank with the fact that she is in love with him in the rest of the book? Is she merely hiding the truth from herself? I can buy that idea, but Robinson handles it poorly, IMO.

quote: I kind of chuckled when I got to the personality grid... I appreciate an author who is honest and ballsy enough to tell us that he uses a formula to develop his characters!

I disagree that formulaic can be considered "honest and ballsy", no matter how clever the formula may be. And as I said before, I don't think Robinson came up with this formula himself.

	07-05-2003 01:51									#80
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I too enjoyed the shifting viewpoints. Maya is a mess. She dislikes Frank and thinks he's scary, but when John dies, she finds she needs Frank. But she's an emotional rollercoaster, so who knows what she thinks?

That, and she seems like a Hillary Clinton type to me. Always interested in the guy that is going to be or is in power. She's attracted to power and that is the ultimate aphrodesiac for her.

I love seeing how Maya sees things, and then it shifts to Nadia and then you are like 'Maya is ****ing loony!' .

And in the end, really, when you have more than 4 or 5 characters don't they all end up to stereotypes, no matter who is writing the novel? KSR's genius is that the stereotypes are very believable and real.

	07-05-2003 02:04									#81
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KSR's genius is that the stereotypes are very believable and real.

Yoosa say people gonna die?

	07-05-2003 02:13									#82
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The main character in the book is not any of the obvious characters. The main character is humanity itself. Humanity is the character undergowing growth and change. Mars is the antagonist, creating the situation that forces the change. It is through the secondary characters that we witness the transformation of humanity.

I would like to disagree with the idea that the characters in the novel lack depth. I would argue they have more depth than most characters. Why? Because unlike characters in most books, we see these characters from many viewpoints, none of which are the same. In a sense, this is a literary version of Kiwosawa's Ran.

When we first get to know Frank, he's a murderer. Then we see his leadership qualities and his jealousy from Maya. He's a non-entity to Nadia except as a foil to Arkady. John sees him as a former friend. Frank sees himself as put-on by the world (and it's clear from the writing that Frank suffers from moderate to severe depression).

Maya's a crazy b*tch at first (okay, well, always), deeper and loving from John's point of view, a manipulator from Frank's point of view, etc. We see all these, and we gain a deeper understanding of all these characters througout the book. Far from being one-dimensional, these characters have great depth.


. . . Imran seems to have beaten me to this point. Well, great minds think alike.

	07-05-2003 02:20									#83
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MWHAHA... Che called me a great mind

Seriously, though, I agree that looking at the characters from many different views fleshes them out and makes them three-dimensional. You see many sides of each person and then you decide in the end what the person is really like (though you can't always be sure ).

	07-05-2003 03:49									#84
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Boshko, that character is Arkady.

For a long time afterwards I thought that was a horrible piece of fiction - How could that possibly work?

Then I experienced the visit to the US consulate in Vancouver to get my J-1 visa, and learned that hundreds if not thousands of chinese scholars go trough that exact process each day...

	07-05-2003 22:53									#85
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Hmmmm, Frank is from Jacksonville.

	08-05-2003 01:50									#86
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara The main character in the book is not any of the obvious characters. The main character is humanity itself. Humanity is the character undergowing growth and change. Mars is the antagonist, creating the situation that forces the change. It is through the secondary characters that we witness the transformation of humanity.

This is a pretty standard theme in science fiction, that the future change humanity, so I''m not going to give Robinson special credit for using it here.

quote: I would like to disagree with the idea that the characters in the novel lack depth. I would argue they have more depth than most characters. Why? Because unlike characters in most books, we see these characters from many viewpoints, none of which are the same.

Robinson is no William Faulkner. Just because a story is told from a stereotype's POV does not make him any less of a stereotype. I think these characters would have come across much better using a standard third person god-like narrator approach.

quote: In a sense, this is a literary version of Kiwosawa's Ran.

Well, you've managed to top me in the hyperbole department.

	28-05-2003 00:33									#87
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Bump?

	28-05-2003 00:35									#88
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We've exhausted discussion John .

We're ready for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and when I was done with that I read Rendevous with Rama ).

	28-05-2003 00:43									#89
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MiaHM kinda, you know, blows chunks. Big, smelly, gooey chunks.

	08-06-2003 00:30									#90
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While I think RM is an ok read, I'm surprised it won the Hugo or Nebula or whatever.
As Static points out, the writing is fairly poor and sloppy. The timeline is totally screwed up as well.
I am fairly disappointed in the rushed aspect of everything, the dropped concepts and plot points and so on. His handling of John's death was so poor I thought for sure it was a scam and he'd be back later as a surprise or something.
KSR just picks up and drops stuff as it suits him, which, as a "psuedo-writer" myself, really, really bugs me!
Don't know if I'll bother with Blue or Green.