 Sheldon Brown described Robinson's novels as ways to explore how nature and culture continuously reformulate one another; "Three Californias Trilogy" as California in the future; Washington DC undergoing the impact of climate change in the "Science in the Capital" series; or Mars as a stand-in for Earth in the "Mars" trilogy to think about re-engineering on a global scale, both social and natural conditions.Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability is one of his primary themes (a strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia.