Red Mars hardly feels like a book written in the early ‘90s. It feels that Robinson had already peered into the 21st century and knew what was to come. Bruce Sterling, tongue in cheek, likes to say that he blames science fiction dystopias for all humanity’s problems, but the environmental effects we can expect as a result of the unchecked release of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere--the death of the ocean’s coral reefs, rising coastlines, rising global temperatures—are not expressly new news, even in the early ‘90s. Scientists studying the environment had made all of these connections by the late ‘70s. We have the corporate and political sectors to thank for not responding to the scientific community’s warnings with the due diligence required to significantly arrest climate change.
While many critics have focused on Red Mars as a handbook for colonizing Mars or terraforming new worlds, I see Red Mars as a consideration of our earthbound existence. Robinson even signals that his Mars based thought experiment is most applicable on Earth. In response to the positive results from employing terraforming strategies on Mars, governments on Earth begin employing many of the same technologies to counter Earth’s significant spike in carbon. And, more than anything, Red Mars is a meditation on the political realities of experimenting with new economic and social arrangements. Research, exploration, and experimentation are only allowed if the end of all such work results in a bankable product or profitability. No revolution will be tolerated unless altering the system is measurably beneficial to those in power.
In Sci-fi, other Worlds are Always other Worlds and our World
While many critics have focused on Red Mars as a handbook for colonizing Mars or terraforming new worlds, I see Red Mars as a consideration of our earthbound existence. Robinson even signals that his Mars based thought experiment is most applicable on Earth. In response to the positive results from employing terraforming strategies on Mars, governments on Earth begin employing many of the same technologies to counter Earth’s significant spike in carbon. And, more than anything, Red Mars is a meditation on the political realities of experimenting with new economic and social arrangements. Research, exploration, and experimentation are only allowed if the end of all such work results in a bankable product or profitability. No revolution will be tolerated unless altering the system is measurably beneficial to those in power.
Red Mars and Sex
If there is another theme in Red Mars, it is that humans like having sex.
Of course, the inclusion of sex isn’t so disconnected to questions of human economic and social systems. Sex is something of a currency measuring the success of human economic and social systems. Political unions are created through sex. Strategies for structuring society are affirmed by sex. Sex is an affirmation of human life and of human creativity. It is through the act of sex that new humans are created. This biological creation nods toward more abstract, mental forms of creation. And Robinson’s Red Mars is awash with creating new systems or extrapolating on other, as yet, purely theoretical systems like Arthur C. Clarke’s space elevator. Robinson steers an asteroid into orbit over Mars to use as raw material for the creation of a Martian space elevator.
The Future of Humanity
The most frightening aspect of Red Mars is that the colonial experiment fails. This failure seems less an indictment of technological systems for living on and terraforming the planet and more an indictment against humans, exposing their greed and unacceptance of the other, their lack of respect for human life. When UNOMA--The United Nations Office for Martian Affairs—attacks all the Martian colonies, sending a series of nuclear missile strikes, it raises the fear that the differences from one culture to the next are unbridgeable, that humanity has no future, whether on Mars or on Earth.
By the end of Red Mars, the inhospitable conditions of the red planet reflect the inflexibility of human society. After decades of terraforming, the Martian air remains unbreathable and the controlling forces of capital on Earth demand adherence to the wage-slave system. Robinson plays on the redness of Mars, associating that redness to the 20th-century figuring of red as communist. In the utopian space of the communist minded scientific community, presented with fears of advanced aging due to exposure to radiation, the Acheron group develops a life extension therapy for cellular regeneration. But the reason for establishing a colony on Mars is to create a profitable mining operation, harvesting Martian silver, among other resources, not as an experiment in political science. By the end of Red Mars, as a result of UNOMAs unceasing missile strikes in response to a planet-wide revolution, the planet takes on the vision of a broken landscape that is “almost impossible to grasp” (546). The nightmarish landscape reflects the crippled status of Martian society. UNOMA do not allow the colonies to persist under self-government and the colonies do not accept the dictates of UNOMA, resulting in the systematic destruction of all the colonies. Mars, of course, is the Roman god of war, and Robinson’s vision of the war god’s eponymous planet reflects a state of war both with its environment and in the political reality of the colonies.
If Red Mars is strictly a handbook on colonizing planets, its lesson is that the worlds beyond Earth are inhospitable to humans. I don’t believe, however, that this is Robinson’s prime lesson. No, the lesson is that humans are inhospitable to humans whether on Earth or off it. In Robinson’s world, even lovers are constantly at war, unsure of the other, measuring the affection they lavish on their lover in the expectation that love will go cold. Life and love are, after all, losing wars. Entropy meets all with a common end.
Buy Red Mars at Amazon
More Rapid Transmissions:
Aliens
Escape from New York
Buy Red Mars at Amazon
More Rapid Transmissions:
Aliens
Escape from New York