Red Mars (1992)

If the Fremen plan to make Arrakis green was your favourite thread in Dune, Kim Stanley Robinson gives the same argument a whole planet. His Nebula-winning novel, the first of a trilogy, follows the first hundred colonists sent to settle Mars, and their deepest quarrel is about rock: the geologist Ann Clayborne wants the planet left as she found it, while the physicist Sax Russell wants to warm it, thicken its air and turn it green. Back on Earth, transnational corporations work the loopholes in the treaty that governs Mars, and a dispute between scientists becomes a fight over who the planet is for. Expect more than 500 pages, long stretches of geology and engineering, and a final part that turns violent.