In Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996), Robinson uses the speculative science of terraforming an alien world to explore the complex relationships between planetary ecology--the interlocking, autopoietic systems that allow life to flourish--and political economy, the distribution of scarce resources among competing populations and interests. At the center of the trilogy lies what Robinson calls “eco-economics,” his challenge to the default assumption that economics means the exploitation, degradation, and eventual exhaustion of natural resources. Terraforming transforms Mars over the course of the three novels and becomes a means to imagine the birth of a new planetary order that confronts head-on the obstacles to utopian progress: socioeconomic conflict, environmental degradation, racial and religious antagonisms, state violence, and corporate greed. As it undergoes its sea-change from red to green to blue, Mars offers its citizens (and the novels’ readers) a means to imagine a utopian future that replaces the politics of scarcity and desperation with hard-won forms of cooperation, ecological stewardship, democracy, and diversity.