Red Mars
Robinson's 1992 trilogy begins with 100 colonists transforming Mars while arguing about whether transformation is colonialism. Hard SF at its most rigorous, politically serious, and planetary in scale. The definitive terraforming novel.
Long stretches through the middle third are page after page of geological survey with little forward motion. The First Hundred read interchangeable and petty, a “Lumbering Frankenstein monster with all seams showing,” “three-dimensional as soggy, moldy cardboard,” sniping at each other in circles; one reader storms off with “fuck character arcs, KSR.” The common verdict is that the science is the strongest thing here and the characters the weakest, badly enough that the thin people undercut the ideas. And the gender politics trace visibly to its early-nineties vintage, the women read as “either whores or bitches” by the angriest reviews.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
