This is a review of a book named: Moving Mars by Greg Bear. He wrote the book in 1993 and it was nominated for the Hugo Award for that year in 1994.

The book is written as straightforward memoir of a person going through the hero's journey. The protagonist, a woman, starts the story as a college student that has been thrown out of a college on Mars about one hundred years after the founding of the colony. They are in the throes of changing the government from an anarchic type of governing by families, clans and tribes (which they call Bonded Multiples [BMs])into a state ordered government .

She starts her journey by being thrown out of college because her BM does not support the change to a state form of governing. She objects to having her education contract voided and gets caught up with the local campus revolutionaries. Of course, she gets caught and thrown in jail with the revolutionaries, befriends them, and is betrayed by them when they sabotage University property. Her she got to see the sharp end of the state governing powers of coercion. She manages to evade responisbility for damages and becomes a student of managing loose government institutions, basically what we would call political sciences. After years of study and work, her family connections put her in a position to practice interplanetary diplomacy by going to Earth on a mission.

Cassiea, the protagonist, is totally steamrolled on the diplomatic mission by the hardball politics and intrigue going on around her. However, this gets her into the political life on a, now, permanent basis. She returns to Mars to take up local politics, finds an unsuitable boyfriend, then finds a husband and is dragged further into politics. The Motherworld, Earth, is demanding unification of all solar powers into one state, of course, led by the Motherworld because of some new scientific and technological discoveries. The first demand of the motherworld is for the polity of Mars be unified in to one state, to be under the motherworld. She winds up as the Vice President of the intrim government that is trying to unite all of the Bonded Multiples into the state.

This is where the troubles really begin. There is a lot of friction and BMs refusing to join the state. The new technology is apparently a danger to the motherworld and Mars, thus friction and contention. The contention gets resolved by a moving the planet Mars to a location the motherworld cannot find.

I have not included any real spoilers, I don't think. The book was, as advertised, very good and should have gotten the Hugo award for best novel but got beat by Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Mars (another great book). I would suggest this one for the novel viewpoint of the reluctant participant and the descriptions of living on Mars. Elon should read this before sending anybody there. Changing science and technology make very difficult situations for all concerned, is a warning lesson for us, too.

You may want to read this book, too. I recommend it.