2016/16: Red Mars -- Kim Stanley Robinson

2016/16: Red Mars -- Kim Stanley Robinson

... she had been enjoying her life as if it were a Siberia made right, living in a huge analogy, understanding everything in terms of her past. But now she stood under a tall violet sky on the surface of a petrified black ocean, all new, all strange: it was absolutely impossible to compare it to anything she had seen before.[loc. 2154]

2026: the first hundred colonists set off for Mars. Space elevator cable! Complex interpersonal dynamics! Landscapes! Areography! Areophany! ( non-spoilery review )