Just out of curiosity, who here has read the Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanly Robinson? Good set of novels, and with all the new stuff about Mars in the news and on everybody's lips, figured it would be a good time to get new people reading them, if they haven't already.

Check 'em out.

Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars (in that order) by Kim Stanly Robinson. Its about the first 100 colonists to Mars, and via some life prolonguing technology, how they terraform the planet (complete with a faction insistant on them not doing it).

Don't know how good the astronomy in it really is, since its been a while since I've read 'em, but I'll leave that up to you guys. :P

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But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

You forgot the first book in that universe that he wrote, also called Green Mars, but about a mountaineering expidition on Olympus Mons. And The Martians, a collection of short stories from the Mars trilogy universe.

Didn't forget, didn't know about them. I've got the 3 main books, didn't know there were others. Never thought to look for them (I've had the main three for years, and no computer when I first read them, just never really thought about looking them up before).

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But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Cool, so now you have some good reading coming up
I'd recommend you start with Martians, the first Green Mars is a bit tough to find. It was published as one of those "two-novels-in-one-book" things, you know, where one novel starts on the back page and the other starts on the first?

And when you're done with those, I'd recommend Icehenge, also by KSR. I hear his Antartica is good too, but The memory of Whiteness is just too bizzare for me to get my head around

I enjoyed the first two, but never finished Blue Mars - the plot just seemed to peter out and get lost.

Same here, I realy enjoyed Red mars a lot. Green mars I kinda got into. But blue mars nah...