Here are 85 books that Green Mars fans have personally recommended if you like
Green Mars.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Whereas many seek out stories of human triumph and heroic deeds, I have always been captivated by stories that show humanity for what it is–a bastion of innovation and wonder but also a complex and ethically questionable force of nature. I began writing my book when I was twelve years old, and I immediately knew that my characters would not be one-sided, cast in light or shadow. Instead, they would love at times and hate others, try their hardest to do what is right, but sometimes end up doing more harm than good. Remember that a ‘hero’ is a product of perspective when reading these books.
Like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Frank Herbert’s book tells the story of a man who could be the villain or the hero, depending on who you ask. I love watching how an intelligent yet malleable person can be swept up in feelings of duty, responsibility, and leadership only to make highly questionable decisions.
Paul Atreides’ moral ambiguity is undeniably engineered by the shifting and slimy political landscape of the Dune universe, driving home the idea in my mind that good worldbuilding can set the stage for truly complicated characters.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
From early on, I found myself captivated by the concept of a dystopic future for humanity. Years later, a 20+ year police career cemented the notion that people are not inherently good and that if a dystopic future is at all possible–we as a species will make it a reality. My love of science fiction, especially all forms of dystopia, combined with a hard-earned street-level grit and a love of action. Whether writing solo or with my amazing co-author, Dr. Gareth Worthington, I often inject these elements into my stories. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I did!
I’m an action guy. It drives me. So when you have a very well-developed sci-fi dystopia that asks tough questions about consumerism, corporate power, and our growing addiction to tech, and it’s loaded with action, I’m in.
This is that book, and while the actual writing is not always to my specific taste, the overall presentation is masterful. And did I mention action-packed? Looking back, Stephenson’s depiction of our addiction to technology is basically prophetic. Put this one on your list.
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30…
I’m proud to be Irish, from a long heritage of storytellers and poets. Science fiction grabbed me from the first Asimov books I found, and I see the genre as an exploration of possibilities. I volunteer at SF Cons, including Dublin’s Worldcon in 2019. My profession is tree surgery, with an early apprenticeship in demolition, all of which has brought me to interesting places. I also love horses and became a national standard showjumper. I’ve qualified in multimedia journalism and ecology. My novels explore the past, present, and future. I write crime, science fiction, romance, and YA stories, including the Irish Lockdown series about young people during the Pandemic.
In a near future, the creeping changes we already see due to warming climate, produce a sudden dystopia. Young people with rationed food, clean water, and goods, still need to go to school, help their parents and make friends. And then they get asked to help save the world.
I love the energy of this recent publication. The science has been well researched, such as poison ivy thriving in a warmer climate. Middle-grade readers will identify with the characters, and I was delighted by the inclusion of a family in Ireland, chatting over the interwebs with the American schoolkids. Society is visibly shutting down, with resources provided to those in central locations, so anyone outside a city experiences a fast backslide. A few wealthy people are resource hoarders. The determination of the students to learn, share and develop solutions for everyone, leaves me with hope for a positive outcome.
Climate Change Captives 2035 and Project Save is for ages 10 and up with a Lexile reading level of 820L. What would life be like if you were 11 or 12 years old in 2035? If climate change had been a problem, how would people be living? Would schools be different? Would people be living as they do today? What transportation would be available? Think about how people may have adjusted to new hotter temperatures. This story tells what changes people may have had to make and how they adapted to a new normal with less travel. In this story,…
A fractured mind or a global conspiracy? Uncovering the truth can be hell when nobody believes you… and you can’t even trust yourself.
"A fantastic science fiction thriller with a sincere and important message.”—Kirkus Reviews.
“A breathtaking, deeply dark alternate-history Earth with complex characters, layered worldbuilding, and twist after twist after twist.”—Julianna Caro, Reedsy Discovery.
Broken Mirror is the first volume in a queer psychological science fiction saga that looks at the stigma of mental illness and the hellish distrust and alienation that goes with it.
Broken Mirror: the start of a smart, complex, and imaginative cyberpunk alternate history saga. Literary science fiction from a fresh, young voice.
In a skewed mirror universe, a mentally ill young man searches for his grandfather’s killer.
Someone killed Jefferson Eastmore. His grandson Victor is sure of it, but no one believes him.
Diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome and shunned by Semiautonomous California society, Victor suffers from hyperempathy, blank outs, and sensory overload. Jefferson devoted his life to researching mental illness and curing Broken Mirrors like Victor through genetic engineering, but now that he’s gone, Victor must walk a narrow…
I'm a linguist by trade with an MA in Intercultural Communications. I'm also an immigrant in my chosen country. You could say I have a fascination for different worlds/cultures in my blood. But those cultures only really come alive with the people that live in them, the way they think, feel, and talk, and especially where their cultures meet, with all the tensions, heartbreaks, love and hate, misunderstandings, fear, and courage that reverberate in those encounters.
I read this book decades ago from a library, and it stuck with me to such an extent that I had to go out, find it back, buy it, and read it again. Both the characters and the worldbuilding are breathtaking. The story is full of intrigue, politics, careful diplomacy, and self-interested string-pulling, love, fear, and wonder. It's an absolute doorstopper, and I inhaled it.
Orthe - half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe's leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.And on a goodwill tour to the outlying provinces, these evil rumors turn to deadly accusations. Christie is no offworlder, Church officials charge: she…
Science Fiction can explore many themes, including relationships, philosophy, politics, and more. While this is common to many genres, SF is unique in that it also focuses on science-based “what ifs.” What if we could travel to distant stars? What if we could visit the past? The theme of “what if” hinges upon the forward progress of science. This explores the realm of the possible… a realm for which I am passionate.
Another work spanning more than a hundred years and featuring many rich characters, crises, and drama, the Mars Trilogy makes a great summer read. At a little more than 1600 pages, the trilogy is like three seasons of a really engrossing television series.
The trilogy contains ample portions of science, science fiction, politics, and explorations of the human condition. There’s even some boom-boom for those who like a few explosions in their stories. Like my other preferences, there’s little “magic” in the Trilogy’s universe; instead, things mostly make sense after accepting a couple of assumptions. The richness of the characters really stood out for me, helped by the fact that the characters, by and large, experience long lifetimes!
The first novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's massively successful and lavishly praised Mars trilogy. 'The ultimate in future history' Daily Mail
Mars - the barren, forbidding planet that epitomises mankind's dreams of space conquest.
From the first pioneers who looked back at Earth and saw a small blue star, to the first colonists - hand-picked scientists with the skills necessary to create life from cold desert - Red Mars is the story of a new genesis.
It is also the story of how Man must struggle against his own self-destructive mechanisms to achieve his dreams: before he even sets foot…
Science fiction and Fantasy have always been about exploring new ideas in novel ways—right from the beginning, Mary Shelley saw the story of Frankenstein as a chance to explore ideas of liberation and equality that, at the time, were too uncomfortable for mainstream stories. Since then many writers have found success by mashing up sf with other literary genres to discover the boundaries—and the gray areas—between them. In my latest book I explore the deep connection between horror (the fear of the unknown) and sf (the drive toward wonder). Some of my most cherished books have similarly charted these murky borderlands.
I love this book for its science fiction and magical realism. This generational saga of a small town on a recently terraformed Mars is both a love letter to and an evolution on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’sOne Hundred Years of Solitude.
McDonald wanted to capture the frontier magic of a whole new world in a way that wasn’t just moving the American West to space, and in the end he breathes new life into one of the oldest tropes of SF, the colony story.
Charming, fantastical, and witty, it shares its source material’s deep humanism even in the face of cynical realism. It may very well be my favorite novel of all time, and luckily for all of us, there’s an equally great sort of sequel, Ares Express.
It all started thirty years ago on Mars. By the time it was finished, the town of Desolation Road had been witness to every abnormality yet seen on the Red Planet. From Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chautauqua and Educational 'Stravaganza, to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar, nowhere else boasts such sights for the wandering lucky traveller.
Its inhabitants are just as storied. From Dr. Alimantando -- founder and resident genius -- to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother with a child grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo whose way with machines bordered on the mystic, to the…
I read every science fiction novel I could get when I was a kid. My worldview was shaped by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other SF novelists. I want my readers to feel that same “sense of wonder.” I was fortunate to have been exposed to these big ideas early on because they got me interested in artificial intelligence, space colonization, and Big Science – resulting in my computer science work at NASA-Ames Research Center in the 1980s. My fiction and computer games also draw on these concepts, including my hard SF novels: The Forge of Mars, The Digital Dead (sequel to The Forge of Mars), and Prometheus Road, among others.
What if you have an established culture on Mars in 2171 that wants to be independently governed? What if Mars develops a powerful new technology linking human brains to the most advanced AI ever built, giving them almost magical powers of teleportation? I like this book because it’s another great example of how to make advanced technologies and social developments believable through a small number of character perspectives. Arthur C. Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and I appreciate how this novel was able to accomplish that. As a social scientist, I also appreciate the political aspects of this world as shown through the female lead, who starts as a young student protestor for Martian independence and evolves into a seasoned politician.
She is a daughter of one of Mars's oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples--the extended family syndicates that colonized the red planet. But Casseia Majumdar has a dream of an independent Mars, born in the student protests of 2171. During those brief days of idealism she forged bonds of friendship and hatred that set the stage for an astonishing war or revolution on Mars.
As a long-term advocate of space colonization I’ve always been drawn to Mars, not by adventure stories but by the idea that ordinary people may someday live there. So this was the theme of my first novel. I wrote it before we had gone to the moon, though it wasn't published until 1970, after my better-known book Enchantress from the Stars. When in 2006 I revised it for republication, little about Mars needed changing; mainly I removed outdated sexist assumptions and wording. Yet the book still hasn’t reached its intended audience because though meant for girls who aren’t already space enthusiasts, its publishers persisted in labeling it science fiction rather than Young Adult romance.
Most realistic fiction set on Mars is about small exploratory expeditions. There is surprisingly little available about colonization that doesn't bring in the discovery of intelligent inhabitants or a lost civilization, or at least traces of one having existed in the past. And the few novels with no fantastic elements tend to focus on political controversy. So I was happy to find this recent book that depicts what a colony on Mars might really be like. It's based on the board game "Terraforming Mars," which I haven’t seen, but doesn't depend on any knowledge of the game. The story is part murder mystery and while it’s intended to be entertainment rather than serious literature, it will be enjoyed by readers who are excited by the idea of settling a new world.
Mars is the new frontier for humanity, as we launch an epic saga of inspiring planetary exploration set in the award-winning Terraforming Mars boardgame
Mars, 2316. The recently created Terraforming Committee arbitrates the dramatic development of Mars by powerful rival corporations. When a rogue asteroid crashes into a research center and kills its lone technician, the fragile balance between corporations is shattered. The World Government's investigation into the accident reveals a multitude of motives, while a corporation insider stumbles on a dark conspiracy. Two Martians with very different agendas must navigate a trail of destruction and treachery to uncover the…
As a scientist, I love hard science fiction, especially when the story makes me think about the true nature of reality or takes me on an adventure to places unknown. We’ve all read the classics from Clarke, Heinlein, Bear, or Asimov. But books written decades ago are becoming increasingly dated as society progresses into a new century. (Will people of the future really chain smoke? And why are all the characters men?) Never fear, modern hard sci-fi is alive and well. Here are five recent books that tell an intriguing, uplifting, or awe-inspiring story. Even better than the classics, it’s hard sci-fi for the 21st century!
Rysa Walker offers a grab bag of fiction, from time travel to murder mysteries. Her latest series is an alien artifact story set on Mars.
An eccentric and not-so-honest billionaire is terraforming the planet (sound familiar?) and multiple factions of homesteaders are in conflict with the temporary workers. Enter a principled journalist who just wants to bring the breaking alien artifact story to readers back on Earth. She quickly learns that virtually no one on Mars can be trusted. In over her head, she has no ride home.
I like this story in part because Rysa is such a good writer, but also because it feels supremely relevant to our world today.
A chamber from an ancient civilization is uncovered deep below the surface of Mars. Science reporter Claire Echols is assigned to cover the story, but someone is determined to stop her. Is it the wealthy entrepreneur leading the ongoing terraforming effort? The mining companies desperate to protect their livelihoods? The cult leader who wants to put a stop to all scientific progress? Or is someone else so threatened by this discovery that they'll kill to keep it hidden?
Officially a professional philosopher, author of fifteen books and textbooks on a wide range of subjects including ethics, critical and creative thinking, social change, and teaching. Wikipedia calls them “unconventional”, but honestly I prefer the ad copy for my own modest ecotopian book, which calls me a philosophical provocateur. My green credentials start with growing up in the Wisconsin countryside under the distant influence of both Frank Lloyd Wright and Aldo Leopold; later, long wilderness trips intertwined with edgy environmental philosophizing (you need some real edges for that!); and over the last decade the endlessly consuming project of designing and building Common Ground Ecovillage in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
How many times have I reread it? Science/futurist fiction in the style of an Odyssey-scale and -style epic poem about (yes) the terraforming of Mars, a spectacular interplanetary saga framed against the background of the struggle against a misanthropic and authoritarian “Ecotheism” that has taken over Earth, and ending with a long and compelling hymn to the result, a new start on our transformed sister planet. Ecotopia, in short... on Mars!
Originally published in 1988, Genesis was the first major work of fiction that addressed the idea of terraforming Mars. It not only suggested the idea, but provided a feasible solution for doing so. During its initial publication, Genesis was on the list of recommended reading at NASA, and has since gone on to enjoy cult status. Its acknowledged list of admirers includes such literary luminaries as Brian Aldiss, Amy Clampitt, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas M. Disch, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Merrill. It is with great pride that Ilium Press brings this influential and prescient work…
