Five notable books for would-be space travelers

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on the high frontier:

Red Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson

After the moon, Mars represents the next feasible opportunity for manned space exploration. In the kickoff to one of the most celebrated of science-fiction trilogies, Robinson provides an intoxicating vision of how we might settle and transform our planetary neighbor. A cast of intrepid colonists are swept up in a truly epic-scale adventure, with a dash of utopian dreams balanced by the author's integration of deeply researched science about everything from how to thicken a world's atmosphere to new drugs and treatments for aging. Red Mars is a mind-bending journey into a possible future, with implications that touch on ecology, politics, and every aspect of human society.

Read about the other books on the list.

See--Kim Stanley Robinson's ten favorite Mars novels.

--Marshal Zeringue