Utopia Falling Into History in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars

Utopia falling into History in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars Giovanna Ike Coan * Abstract : This article analyzes how the concept of utopia appears in Kim Stanley Robinson’s sci-fi novel Red Mars, a book that portrays the first steps of the planet’s colonization by Earth. My purpose is to show that, even though science and biotechnology provide the means for taming a wild landscape, the utopian solution given at the end of the narrative seems to reinforce both the impossibility of creating otherness, i.e., of giving an alternative to the social system, and the maintenance of History and its flaws. Keywords : science fiction, utopia, social alternatives, Red Mars. According to Fredric Jameson, in our historical moment science fiction is the locus where “Utopian thinking and radical social alternatives, about which Mrs. Thatcher has so famously affirmed that none exist” (2005:212), can still be developed, with the projections of different worlds, i.e., of worlds that represent Otherness and “our deepest fantasies about the nature of social life, (…) as we feel in our bones it ought rather to be lived” (Jameson, 1992:34). Thus, as the American Marxist critic affirms, all ostensible Utopian content is ideological for they reinforce – through a dialectical process – hegemonic values of the present, of our reality, and, as Mannheim ( apud Bobbio et al., 2000:1285) points out: (...) a mentalidade utópica pressupõe não somente estar em contradição com a realidade presente, mas também romper os liames da ordem existente. Não é somente pensamento, e ainda menos fantasia, ou sonho para sonhar-se acordado; (...). Transcende a situação histórica enquanto orienta a conduta para elementos que a realidade presente não contém (...). Utopia é, isto sim, inatuável somente do ponto de vista de uma determinada ordem social já sedimentada. Moreover, the analysis of science fiction narratives must consider the projection of new worlds in light of Samuel T. Coleridge’s opposition between “Fancy” and “Imagination” ( apud Jameson, 2005), being the former the domain of the detail, the style, and the latter the “narrative per excellence ”, the totality, or, as for Jameson, “the studium and punctum , so to speak, of the Utopian image” ( idem : 218). As we are going to see afterwards, such narratives, although highly ornamental and compelling in terms of “Utopian Fancy”, tend to fail in the construction of the “Utopian Imagination”, i.e., in * Undergraduated student at the University of São Paulo. E-mail: [email protected]. presenting the closure, the alternative to the system, especially concerning the realm of social order. In the present article, the focus is on the utopian content of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars (1993), the first book of an ambitious trilogy that portrays the colonization of this planet 1. Based on Marcuse ( apud Bobbio et al., 2000:1286), who proposes that “o termo utopista seja usado somente para designar um projeto de transformação (…) considerando que a Utopia esteja ultrapassada porque hoje qualquer transformação do ambiente técnico e natural é uma possibilidade real”, here we are going to notice that even though the progress in science and biotechnology provides the means for taming a wild landscape – or, using the novel’s terms, of terraforming it –, the utopian solution given at the end of the story seems to reinforce both the impossibility of change in society and the maintenance of History and its flaws. 1. “ God gave us this planet to make in our image, to create a new Eden. ” 2 Robinson’s epic tale of colonization, settlement and revolution takes place on Mars, Earth’s fascinating neighboring planet, and thus differs considerably from other sci-fi novels that are set in imaginary planets, such as the opposing Urras and Anarres in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed . This choice not only strengthens the sense of verisimilitude in such utopian plot – for it is not difficult to imagine the colonization of the Solar System as the next step in the contemporary highly advanced space programs –, but also catches the reader’s interest and awakes his fantasies because, as it is indicated in the following passage, (…) we are still those animals who survived the Ice Age, and looked up at the night sky in wonder, and told stories. And Mars has never ceased to be what it was to us from our very beginning – a great sign, a great symbol, a great power. 3 As a conclusion, it is given that “ And so we came here. It had been a power; now it became a place. ”; in this sense, the “we” of the passage may be interpreted as all human beings, and not as the restricted “First Hundred” settlers of Mars portrayed in the narrative. This has much to do with Ernst Bloch’s argument, in 1 Robinson’s “Mars Trilogy” consists of Red Mars (published in 1993), Green Mars (published in 1994) and Blue Mars (published in 1996). 2 ROBINSON, Kim Stanley (1993). Red Mars . New York: Bantam Books, p. 171. 3 Idem, p. 03. The Principle of Hope , that “the similarity, which so quickly became popular and was indeed relative, of conditions of life on Mars with those on earth certainly encouraged the assumption that the planet was a terra habitabilis [inhabitable country]” (1995:783). Then, the sacred power of the unreachable red planet lost its force when the symbolic battle between Nature and Culture, i.e., between the Universe and Man, was won by the latter, who turned Mars into a mere place and, therefore, one of his possessions. The next step was giving it an Earthlike atmosphere, i.e., to terraform it, to build it identical to Earth. Here, it is possible to approach our study to Roland Barthes’ analysis on the “Martian psychosis” in Mythologies , for whom “mal foi criado no céu, eis Marte assim alinhado pela mais forte das apropriações, a da identidade” (1997:38). The author proposes that “toda esta psicose se funda sobre o mito do Idêntico, isto é, do Duplo. Mas aqui, como sempre acontece, o Duplo encontra-se em avanço, o Duplo é Juiz” (1997:37), however, a Judge that only diverges a little from a pure projection of the Earth. In Red Mars , this image of the Double is seen, as mentioned above, in the terraforming process, which, we might say, includes both the geographical and the social dimensions of the settlement. With the collapse of the utopian “communal and functioning society” and the revolution at the end of the book, the depiction of Mars mirrors that of Earth’s history and confirms Barthes’ assumption that, Provavelmente, se desembarcássemos por nossa vez no planeta Marte, tal como nós mesmos o construímos, não iríamos encontrar mais do que a própria Terra, e entre estes dois produtos de uma mesma história não seríamos capazes de distinguir qual é o nosso. (1997:37) Therefore, we come to the conclusion – which is one of the central ideas in Jameson’s works – of the impossibility of thinking Otherness , or of “the future as disruption”, in a present so deeply cut with the non-existence of social alternatives 4. But the idea of creating a new Eden on Mars expresses the desire of creating a new start for humanity’s life, since the mythical Garden of Eden was the location of the beginning of history, and its flawless state is connected to “the geographical wishful realm of happiness, with a wishful age in which it is attained” (Bloch, 1995:759). So here we observe the opposition between History (the sinful state of the Earth) and Utopia (the return to the sinless Eden) in the realm of the Martian 4 Similarly, Barthes concludes that “uma das características constantes de toda a mitologia pequeno- burguesa é esta incapacidade de imaginar o Outro” (1997:37). colonization. Later on in this analysis, we are going to see that the unsuccessful development of a new social order on Mars will lead into the search for a second “Martian paradise” – which stands for the Biblical second earthly paradise of Canaan, the Promised Land – represented by Hiroko Ai’s hidden community. The desire for such an idealized social order on Mars is highlighted right in the selection process of the “First Hundred” colonists, with the choice of extraordinarily talented scientists in varied areas, who formed perfect symmetries according to the colonist-psychiatrist Michel Duval. As the character Maya Toitovna asks herself, “ was this the rational society at last, the scientifically designed community that had been the dream of the Enlightenment? ”5, or as Arkady Bogdanov states: We have been sent here by our governments, and all of our governments are flawed, most of them disastrously. It’s why history is such a bloody mess. Now we are on our own, and I for one have no intention of repeating all of Earth’s mistakes just because of conventional thinking. We are the first Martian colonists! We are scientists ! It is our job to think things new, to make them new! 6 But as the narrative goes on, we see that the intervention of the transnational exploitation companies and the massive influx of immigrants, i.e., the influence of capitalism itself, disrupt the primary wish for scientific and rational control over social beings. In addition, one of the sources of conflicts in Red Mars is the disapproval that part of the scientist team expresses of the terraforming process, which has as its main voice the character Ann Clayborne, as observed in the following speech: But it isn't right! I mean I look at this land and, and I love it. I want to be out on it traveling over it always, to study it and live on it and learn it.

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