Colonizing Mars

Space is the “last frontier.” While this statement may seem clichéd, at the rate the population is growing, this could be true. As Fred Turner said in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American History.” This means that space exploration of the mid-1960’s was the beginning of the second period of American history. The question arises if we are destined to destroy the frontier like we did in America. However, the issue in science fiction isn’t whether space travel is inevitable, but when it is going to happen, and what kind of environment we will live in. In many sci-fi works, humans live and operate on lunar or satellite colonies, like those found in the anime franchise Gundam, which are usually controlled by individual nations. In Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars colony isn’t a national set up; it is a world colony that is meant to include and represent all of humanity. According to Michel Foucault, this would be a “heterotopia,” a place where things are supposed to occur. The question arises if Mars is supposed to be the place where diversity is finally realized and racism dies. Like traditional heterotopia, Mars was not free to everyone’s access, and though eventually other countries gained the access that they deserved, it isn’t until after the first 100 and still the communities set up were very tight knit with the exception of the Bedouin community. This is a rather interesting contrast because colonies are set up to help a “mother country,” and even if Earth is the mother country, not all nations will benefit equally. Likely the U.S. and the Russia will gain the most since they were the originators of the project. Also, it seemed that even though some colonists wanted to break away, others wanted to represent their nations proudly, like the colonies found in G Gundam, where each orbiting colonial satellite represents one specific country.
When Americans, or any other people who live in a former colony think of colonialism, the obvious idea thought is “how long will it take for us to break away?” In Red Mars, it takes very little time for the first one hundred to change how they will set up their colony. In fact, their first glimpse of liberation occurs when they decide that the American and the Russians, fresh off the end of the Cold War, should not live in separate sections of the ship because it “reinforces the other divisions between us” (R 36). Throughout the remainder of the flight, Arkady, the radical, tells the crew that they should “make new plans,” (R 59) this is the instinct of the colonizer. They want to be free and don’t want to be controlled.
I found it interesting that throughout the novel, Mars seems to fall into deeper and deeper chaos. After the 100 arrive on the planet, it doesn’t take long for factions to arrive. The major conflict of terraforming is very reminiscent of how when immigrants move to a new place they try to build things and form communities that are reminiscent of home.
While the scientists were pro-terrafroming, others saw it as a risk, because they found Mars to be an ideal place, and wanted to keep it the way it was and felt it was a taboo to change Mars. However, for the earthlings on Mars, terraforming is not to make Mars look like Earth, it is to make it more livable. As can be seen in the end of the movie Total Recall, Mars’s core must change for the humans to be able to survive. In this movie, the core of Mars in made of ice, and Quaid decides to use a machine to turn part of the core into air to save the humans who are starving for air. Both these stories relate how Earthlings try to create their own existence on a foreign planet. However, in Red Mars, there is a blatant concern for the effects of terraforming on Mars. This leads to the splintering of the 100 and eventually causes Hiroko to leave the initial settlement and start her own settlement using her genetically engineered children. Hiroko’s group goes as far as starting a new Shinto-esque Martian religion, where, like in traditional Shinto, the kami’s represented nature. Thus they were against the terraforming because of its destruction of what they saw as holy. Eventually, following the death of John Boone, Mars falls into chaos, due to increased sabotage by radical groups, mimicking the disarray on Earth. While Robinson is vague in her description of the uprising, she makes it clear that it occurs because of a debate over what the new Martian constitution will yield. The revolution leads to madness and the eventual death of many of the 100, including Frank Chalmers, one of the original leaders.
In the end, “primal Mars … melt[s] away. Red Mars [is] gone” [R 550]. I find this line to be rather interesting. We tend to think of celestial bodies as eternal; having Mars no longer be red is a drastic change. It shows the power of humanity. Like how the Americans broke free of British rule, humanity once again does the unimaginable. Since the series is a trilogy, it will be rather interesting to see if a new Martian republic will rise from the ashes of Red Mars, or if more chaos will ensue since the novel ends with Hiroko saying “‘this is where we start again’” (572).