Have you started it? I’ve read it before and really enjoyed it, but it’s dry as all hell. One of the best hard sci fi novels ever written though, in my opinion.

Most of the science holds up too, except one that I’m aware of – due to new information that wasn’t available at the time he wrote it. Unsolicited nerdiness follows:

Martian soil has since been discovered to contain something called perchlorate salt. Perchlorates are strong oxidizers and are generally considered to be toxic to life on Earth, if digested. There are ways around it though. There’s an enzyme called perchlorate reductase which if digested alongside perchlorates will reduce it to a chlorite; likewise, there’s an enzyme called chlorite dismutase which would reduce the chlorite to something safe. You’d need to take these as supplements (like lactose intolerant people take lactase), or do something like engineer gut bacteria to produce these enzymes. Knowing KSR, if he had know about this prior, he would have spent several chapters on this issue. ;)

Hope you enjoy it. Wish I could read it again for the first time :)