Red Mars

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death.

“So that yes, yes, yes, he found himself proclaiming exactly the same lies they had just heard from John!”

Chalmers defines himself in opposition to Boone given their many years of intense rivalry. After Boone’s charismatic speech, during which Chalmers seethed with resentment, Chalmers is horrified to find himself repeating many of the same points. He hates himself for this, hinting why he’ll soon be driven to the extreme position of eliminating Boone as a threat.

“She had managed to penetrate Glavkosmos’s little politburo, playing the men against each other in the subtlest of ways.”

Maya’s rise through the ranks of the Russian administration foreshadows her complicated relationships with Boone and Chalmers on Mars. She’s aware that others (particularly men) tend to dismiss her as an emotional woman and uses this to her advantage, manipulating the emotions of those around her in such a way that they remain dismissive of her threat. Just as Maya emerges as the leader of the Russian contingent of the 100, she’ll emerge from the novel as the only leader from that contingent who’s still alive. She characterizes it as a “little politburo”; the politburo (or political bureau) is the highest political entity in communist governments, so this reference would have been especially evocative when the book was published, just after the end of the Cold War.