January 2000, and as it shines like a faint red star in the sunset glow, Mars has never been more inspiring or frustrating. In the last few months not one but two probes have reached Mars, only to vanish before sending back even one image or crackle of static. All we can do is seek comfort in our well-thumbed copies of National Geographic, flicking through the pages of pictures sent back by the Pathfinder probe and its plucky little rover, Sojourner, two and a half years ago, and dream of what Might Have Been…
Meanwhile, the public hunger for things Martian shows no signs of being satisfied. The bookshops are full of titles about the Red Planet, the shelves are groaning under their weight in the fact and fiction sections alike, as science fiction novels and technical papers and journals continue to bathe in the post-ALH84001 glow. And despite the failures of the Climate Observer and Polar Lander, even disillusioned space activists are talking openly once more about the possibility of manned missions a couple of decades into the next century. We’re talking about the future with renewed confidence.
And that red future holds many things for the intrepid martian explorers; exhausting treks down the Mariner Valley, circumnavigations of the Olympus Mons caldera, and much more.
But you don’t have to be psychic to predict that within a hundred years – when all the science has been done, when we’ve gathered our rock samples and proved one way or another the existence of native martian life – history will repeat itself and Mars will become a New World, a frontier to be tamed, an ochre-coloured Wild West where individuals, corporations and governments all stake their claims to the land and its resources. If the Tom Cruise film “Far and Away” had been set on Mars it would have been a glimpse into the future.
But what will they – the Settlers – do after they’ve carved up the New World? One answer would be to terraform Mars, to make it more like Earth by thickening its atmosphere, melting its ice caps and… well, you all know how they’d do it, everyone reading this magazine will be familiar with the concept, and if you’re not then all you have to do is read the best-selling Mars Trilogy books of Kim Stanley Robinson.
When it comes to terraforming, there’s no fence to sit on. You’re either a Green, or a Red, Greens being pro, Reds being anti. I’m proud to say I’m a Red, I was before I even read the books, and the very thought of terraforming Mars makes me feel both angry and sick. To be fair, the Greens have some convincing arguments, dwindling resources and living space on Earth being the most obvious, but they don’t move me. I just don’t think it will ever happen, and here’s why.
Firstly, it will just take too long, many hundreds of years at the very best, and probably several – if not tens of thousands of years. By the time we can even think about beginning the terraforming process it’ll be easier and cheaper to build space stations and habitats in Earth orbit, using lunar resources. It makes more sense to occupy the Moon first – it’s nearer for a start – and build domes over small craters and live in there before moving on to settle inside larger features such as Eratosthenes and Copernicus, craters with floors big enough to actually landscape. And long before the first comet blazes to its death through the martian atmosphere, settlements will be springing up on near Earth asteroids.
And think about this. If the process of terraforming Mars took only a thousand years, in that time – even without the development of ships like the Enterprise – we’ll probably have discovered worlds around other stars which need no terraforming at all, which are ready for immediate occupation.
And we haven’t even mentioned the cost yet!
But, as good as those practical arguments against terraforming are, there’s one reason why I don’t think it will happen: we won’t be allowed to do it, not without a helluva fight anyway, because the martians – and by that I mean the native martians, the children of the settlers, not any canyon-dwelling cousins of ET! – will fight against it. They won’t want their world turning into a mock-Earth! They’ll be fiercely proud of its barren landscapes. They won’t want it turning into Earth #2 because they’ll feel no affinity to or affection for Earth #1.
Imagine the scene in a junior school class at the Kasei Base in 2062, the year Halley’s Comet comes back. The teacher is giving a lesson about Earth, but the kids are laughing in disbelief. What did she just say? A world where the sky is blue? Where there’s so much water it lies in pools in the open air? Where there’s so much water it forms things called “oceans”, huge bodies of water within which live creatures the size of shuttlecraft?! Sure, they’ll have been shown Earth through their parents’ telescopes, peered at its tiny blue and white disc for themselves, but are they really meant to believe that water actually falls from the sky there – from the sky! – in different forms, sometimes as a liquid, other times as an icy slush, and sometimes even as a white powder which settles on the ground and can be moulded into shapes by hand… and then thrown? Yeah, right..!
Older children will take it for granted, of course. Virtual Reality will allow them to “visit” Earth and experience terran life for themselves, they’ll know everything about it. But to their younger brothers and sisters Earth will, for a while at least, until they’re “taught better”, literally be just a blue star they see twinkling in the sky before sunrise or after sunset. It will be as alien a world to them as Mars is to us today.
The very idea of terraforming Mars will be abhorrent to at least some of these young martians. They’ll look out their classroom window, upon the rolling, rock-strewn orange landscape glowing in the sunlight beneath a huge, peach-coloured sky, and feel a fierce pride, and some will grow up determined to fight – politically and physically – against terraforming, just as campaigners here on Earth fight against pollution, environmental damage and developments today. Think about it; if people today feel moved enough to protest against oil-spills, or the burning of the rainforests or the slaughter of whales – even against having a by-pass built near their town – is it so ridiculous to predict people will resist having their entire planet re-shaped? I don’t think so.
As we enter March 1998, and the only people striding across the frozen deserts of Mars are the ones we see in artists’ impressions, discussing a “Red” anti-terraforming movement such as the one found in Kim Stanley Robinson’s books may seem far-fetched, but I am absolutely convinced it will become a reality, and will even be known by that very name. History repeats itself, regardless of location, so the Children Of Mars will argue, protest and, eventually, if necessary, fight to keep Mars red.
I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say that if I was in their boots I’d do the same thing, I’d be a Red. I’m a Red now. And I’m not the only one.
I’m not saying that terraforming won’t have its native supporters, people who have seen pictures of Earth and want to be free to walk on their world without a pressure suit, because it will. But I truly believe most natives will value Mars’ rugged desolation more.
It may be centuries until we have to start worrying about such things, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that the only obstacles to terraforming will be practical or economical, or that we will begin to do it as soon as we have the technology, because it’s not as simple as that. Apart from the fact that we have no right to “play God” by flooding Mars’ dried valleys, melting its ice caps or seeding it with algae and lichen, it’s arrogant to assume that the people who’ll be affected by it – the people born on Mars – will just sit back and let such planetary vandalism happen. The Governments and businesses in charge of the terraforming had better be ready to tackle some martian “tree-huggers”…
So, all you terraforming advocates out there, enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts. Think up your schemes and dream your dreams of comet impacts and flash floods and huge, planet-thawing mirrors while you can.
Because the Children Of Mars will have other ideas..!
Stuart Atkinson
Copyright© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Stuart Atkinson, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.
