New Mars

New Mars interviews award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson on the futility of metaphors and the promise of Mars.

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of the award-winning trilogy of Mars – Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. His other novels include Antarctica, The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge, A Short, Sharp Shock and others.

At the recent Second Mars Society convention held in Boulder, Colorado in August 1999, Robinson dazzled audiences with his wit, wisdom and passion, even as he presented sometimes contrarian views. His latest work, The Martians, was recently published by Bantam Spectra.

He is a current member of the Mars Society’s board of directors.

New Mars: What drew you to Mars?

Kim Stanley Robinson: I saw the Viking satellite photos and the maps made from them at around the same period I was exploring and falling in love with California’s Sierra Nevada. There was an association in my mind, as the Viking data made it clear that Mars was a whole beautiful planet consisting of vast mountainous desert wilderness.

NM: Where do hope you to see Mars exploration in 25 years?

KSR: By 2025 I hope to have seen us build a small but fully functioning Mars base, continuously occupied by scientists and other people.

NM: At the opening of the 22nd century?

KSR: By 2100? That’s harder! By then I would hope that an independent human community was established on Mars, and engaged in terraforming the planet.

Metaphors are a basic operation of human thought, and they can be the most beautiful of literary figures, but a bad metaphor is worse than none at all.

NM: At the Mars Society conference, you urged all to avoid analogies for Mars exploration, such as it’s akin to raising a child or discovering the New World. Why should we avoid them? It would seem that analogies tend to help us speak about the concept of human Mars exploration in terms that are known and understood, and therefore act as a common tongue of sorts when we try to explain the idea to others.

KSR: Metaphors are a basic operation of human thought, and they can be the most beautiful of literary figures, but a bad metaphor is worse than none at all. When it comes to the human exploration of Mars, I think the differences are bigger than the similarities to any previous action, and because of that the analogies obscure more than they illuminate. Better to admit that going to Mars is a new idea or event in history, unlike anything else that has come before, and to say “it’s like going to the next planet out and settling there too.”

NM: You’ve termed the human exploration of Mars a “green” project. How so?

KSR: We are already terraforming the Earth, but in ignorance and before we are prepared to do it, and all while the human population is dangerously testing the limits of the planet’s carrying capacity. In this situation studying Mars, and even attempting to terraform it, become important aspects of Earth management research, because comparative planetology is a powerful tool when you are trying to understand global issues like climate, atmosphere creation or loss, and so on. Thus exploring Mars, among its other justifications, is also a “green project”.

NM: Excepting your own characters, who’s your favorite Martian?

KSR: Well, if inaminate things–or call them robots–are included, than the Viking orbiter that took all those satellite photos in the late 1970s would have to be my favorite. As for real historical personages: Alexander Bogdanov, who wrote so passionately about Mars as the site for a better society. For fictional characters, I think Philip K. Dick’s Bleekmen, his indigenous aboriginals who wander the desert margins of his novel Martian Time-Slip.

Filed under: Interviews on August 7th, 2001