[edj]

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It's sci-fi, not fantasy, but what sci-fi it is! A hard sci-fi account of the colonization and terraforming of Mars with tremendous verisimilitude and a boatload of Big Ideas.

Robinson explores space travel, the problem of living on low-atmosphere worlds, architecture on other planets, eco-economics, post-capitalist economies, tele-robotics, self-assembling factories, world governments, underground resistance in an always-on surveillance state, corporations with the power of nation states, and the development of a new religion.

It's a powerful stuff and a lot of fun, to boot.