Mars: The Continuing Frontier in Science Fiction

Just as, early American settlers viewed land West of the Mississippi as, ‘free land as far as the eye can see’, early science fiction writers created a Mars that was ‘ripe for the taking’ in their many stories of colonization. The Frontier Myth is from the idea that early settlers viewed uninhabited land as free to whoever wants it, a first come, first served mentality attached with unlimited opportunity. Well, as my dear father told me long ago, nothing in life is free. Of course the Frontier Myth doesn’t account for who or what was there before the ones doing the taking. Therein lies the problem. Or for many early science fiction writers- a great story idea. Fuelled by real scientific observation, starting with Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and his 1877 “discovery” of canals on the planet Mars (which later was rejected as part of the natural landscape by better technology) to the 1960’s and 1970’s NASA programs Mariner and Viking. Specifically because of the real science behind Mars exploration, authors like; Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, Greg Bear, Moving Mars, and Kim Stanley Robinson with Red Mars, all explored very scientific, but humanistic stories with themes of the political, economical and social effects of colonization on Mars.
One interesting aspect of Mars literature is the use of environmental similarities of globalization here on Earth as a reflection in the colonization of Mars stories. In her article, “Martian Ecologies and the Future of Nature”, Ursula K. Heise talks about the shift of a “postmodernist thought” to one of “ecocriticism”. A term that emerged in the early ‘90’s when ‘globalization’ was the new thing in literary and cultural studies. She goes on to talk about how the “meaning of nature” has changed, because people have changed it by way of ‘climate change-which is still an ongoing debate-and because of that change, it is “not natural”, but man-made. Enter Mars. A desolate, uninhabited setting, a ‘clean slate’ free from sins of prior civilizations of Earth’s past. But why pick a place with no livable environment to speak of, as Heise wisely notes, “The choice of planet Mars for some of the most important of these works may seem curious at first since nature in the sense of ecology and biology is precisely what Mars does not have.” This could be the definition of “Science Fiction”, to create from the ground up, a complete (or not) society and environment with its own set of rules set in or about space.
The dry, frozen Mars of Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is one example of the idea of building a completely new society on a very different world. Although the place is somewhere in our imagination, the stories are set in real issues Robinson clearly uses as metaphors for our mistakes here on Earth. His novel is epic, to say the least, spanning over several decades, hundreds of characters, several governments all struggling for a piece of Mars and the perceived benefits that go with it. The power that goes with discovery and what comes after, one character replys, “…everyone talking about ownership, or sovereignty, fighting, making claims. People squabbling like those old Gods of Olympus, because nowadays we’re just as powerful as they were.”
In Moving Mars, the habitat is very similar, dry, cold, the characters refer to themselves as “Red Rabbits”, they live underground on Mars. Again, Bear’s socially, politically and economically complex world is a great metaphor for what we have done/are doing wrong on Earth. By the end of the story, they literally “move” Mars away from a dying Earth and it’s desperate people.
In an article titled, “Martian Musings and the Miraculous Conjunction”, by Kim Stanley Robinson, he admits to a moment of slight panic when writing the last of his Mars trilogy, Blue Mars. Some scientists at NASA found what they thought to be fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite. In considering Mars to have contained life at some point, making it ‘wet’ at some point in time, he said this, “So life on Mars would complicate the terraforming project to the point where it might never happen, which would in effect change my novel from SF to fantasy. And I don’t like fantasy. It takes a dead Mars to make my novel possible, so I’m rooting for that finding.” He goes on to say that the future of science fiction might be robots. At least that is where he would lean if he had to do it all again. He also thinks the current climate crises is the reason why we will not see a man on Mars anytime soon. “Studying Mars has value for us, but it is not primary,” Robinson claims.
In conclusion, I think the current problems of Earth-whether it’s social, economical, environmental or all three and then some-will continue to be held up as a mirror in Science Fiction to come. Put simply, as long as we have Mars fiction, the Frontier Myth is not going away anytime soon. After all, that is what makes good literature in any genre, the ability to see and judge ourselves in our stories.