Kim Stanley Robinson’s series of novels about pioneering colonists of the Red Planet is being adapted for TV – this could actually be great news, says J ames Smythe

The quest to find television’s science fiction answer to Game of Thrones might have finally come to end: Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic Mars trilogy is arrives on screens in 2017, reports Variety. With the first volume published to huge critical acclaim and massive sales in 1993, the three books – Red Mars, Green Mars (1994) and Blue Mars (1996) – have long been rumoured to be making the transition: the rights were once held by director James Cameron.

I first came across Robinson’s books when I was 14: I was on holiday, and somebody had left a copy of Red Mars in our hotel. I was reading books at a colossal rate, and when I ran out of Stephen Kings (an addiction well documented here), I turned to Robinson. Red Mars was the first “hard” science fiction novel – that is, sci-fi that deals with the science as much as the fiction – that I remember reading.

Robinson’s trilogy comes with the kind of twists, lies and larger overarching mysteries that dominate TV drama, playing themselves out on the surface of the hitherto unexplored planet. Unlike Game of Thrones, however, the books are less about war and more about peace. Robinson tells a story of discovery, seen up close through his characters’ eyes, and taking place over several centuries. Dealing mostly with the people chosen to terraform the planet, their lives and the metaphorical baggage that they bring to this most hostile and dangerous of jobs, the books have a wonderful underlying allegory about our own planet. Indeed, it’ll be interesting to see if the screenwriters – with Kim Stanley Robinson confirmed as a consultant – will update his allegories to take in global warming, fracking and the other fears that have arrived since the books’ publication.

Earlier this year, science fiction author Adam Roberts described Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel Aurora as “the best generation starship novel I’ve ever read”. He wasn’t at all wrong – really, TV could not be in safer hands.

Are the books in safe hands? The man in charge of adapting Robinson’s space opera is no stranger to epic sci-fi himself: in the 1990s, J Michael Straczynski created the much-loved Babylon 5, a story of battles and moral quandaries concerning our push to populate space with plenty of conspiracies and twists. Straczynski may have the perfect skill set to run a complicated project such as Red Marsand will be joined on by Game of Thrones producer Vince Gerardis – another great name to have on board.

Perhaps the only question mark comes with the channel that’s making the show. Where epic television has become synonymous with the BBC and premium cable channels such as HBO and Showtime, Red Mars is being produced by and aired on Spike TV. This is the channel whose first foray into scripted television in a decade only happened last year with the not-exactly-setting-the-world-alight miniseries Tut, based on the life of Tutankhamun. Indeed, the majority of its content at the moment seems to revolve around showing MMA matches and making reality television about tattoo artists.

Kim Stanley Robinson and Sheldon Solomon on exploration and death – books podcast Read more

If they don’t immediately seem like the people to bring these revered books to screens, they’re certainly saying all the right things. Sharon Levy, Spike’s “executive vice president of original series”, described Red Mars as being “about humanity. This group of strangers must find a way to live together and survive under the most daunting conditions mankind has ever faced – to become the first living generation of Martians. They will be each other’s greatest source of strength – and if they can’t coexist – the greatest reason for failure.”

This is exactly what the many millions of fans of these books want to see: humanity displaced, struggling to establish a utopia and find a way to survive. The Mars trilogy is about people trying to achieve something good, not stop something bad – something of a surprise in genre fiction, which has stayed with me since that holiday. While I loved the sequels, Red Mars will always be it for me, and I’m crossing my fingers that it survives the journey to screen to be as epic and personal as I’ve always envisioned it. If Spike and Straczynski can match Robinson’s tone from the books, while still hitting the weekly conflict and stress beats that television demands, Red Mars could be very good indeed.