Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy is one of science fiction’s most honored series, with Red Mars winning the distinguished Nebula Award, and both Green Mars and Blue Mars honored with the Hugo. A modern-day classic of the genre, this epic saga deftly portrays the human stories behind Earth’s most ambitious project yet: the terraforming of Mars.

Now, following the publication of his acclaimed adventure novel, Antarctica, Robinson returns to the realm he has made his own, in a work that brilliantly weaves together a futuristic setting with a poetic vision of the human spirit engaged in a drama as ancient as mankind itself.

From a training mission in Antarctica to blistering sandstorms sweeping through labyrinths of barren canyons, the interwoven stories of The Martians set in motion a sprawling cast of characters upon the surface of Mars. As the planet is transformed from an unexplored and forbidding terrain to a troubled image of a re-created Earth, we meet men and women who are bound together by their experiences on Mars and with each other.

Among them are Michel, a French psychologist dazzled by the beauty around him; Maya, a woman whose ill-fated love affairs lead to her first voyage to Mars; and Roger, a tall Martian-born guide who lacks social skills but has the courage to survive on the planet’s dangerous yet strangely compelling surface.

Beginning with the First Hundred explorers, generations of friends, enemies, and lovers are swept up in the drama that is Earth’s tenuous toehold on Mars. International exploration turns into world building; world building degenerates into political conflict, revolution, and war.