Red Mars An analysis of the novel from the Cli-Fi perspective - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Red Mars

An analysis of the novel from the Cli-Fi perspective ENG456 Climate Fiction & Films Shehzad Hathi (12666)

Agenda

• About the novel
• Red Mars as Cli-Fi
• Martian Utopia
• Critique of Capitalism

About the novel

• Science fiction masterpiece by Robinson published in 1992
• First in the Mars Trilogy, Nebula award winning book
• Robinson called it an attempt to write "utopian fiction"
• Human colonization of Mars in 2026
• 100 chosen scientists aboard Ares
• Deals with the scientific, political and socio-economic issues in

creating a colony on Mars

Red Mars as Cli-Fi

• Extra-terrestrial climate change - Terraforming
• Anarchy on Earth - "Things are always going to be falling apart on

Earth, you might as well get used to it."

• Mining on Mars, Oil drilling in Antarctica
• Transnats vis-à-vis CorpSeCorps
• Areophany vis-à-vis God's Gardeners
• "Metaphors describing what we need to do here [...]"

Martian Utopia

• Imagination of a perfect society on Mars - Red Star (1908),

Alexander Bogdanov

• The Dispossessed (1974), Ursula K. Le Guin - popular utopian sci-fi

novel

• "God gave us this planet to make in our image, to create a new

Eden."

• Robinson's "Dialogical Utopia"

Critique of Capitalism

• Modern capitalism as an outgrowth of feudalism
• "There's a feeling of fear and political apprehension that late

global capitalism is not fair."

• Eco-economics - earn as much as their real contribution to

economy

• Non-money economy initially
• Inertia of history, domination by transnats

References

• Szeman, I., Whiteman, M., & Robinson, K. S. (2004). Future

politics: an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.

• Jameson, F

. (2000). ‘If I find one good city I will spare the man’: Realism and Utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia, 17, 208.

• Paulson, Steve (2015, July). What Could Happen If We Did Things

Right: An Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson, Author Of Aurora. Electric Literature.