In this passage, John Boone is traveling between the established Martian colonies, serving as a political spokesperson while also investigating various sabotages made against prominent terraforming sites. Because John is discussing the vastness of history, this passage seemingly expresses the recurrent notion within science fiction of the sense of wonder or sublime. For instance, by contemplating the “unknowable” and “infinite” nature of history, John explores the historical sublime. As The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction describes, John experiences the “mind-expanding power” of the “vast scale and enormity of human history” and its “controlling” or “transformative” abilities (Evans et al. xvii; Lecture, Nov. 14). Moreover, in this description