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1/ Just finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy tonight, an epic future account of the colonization and terraforming of Mars over 200 years. I’m in a state of awe at what a monumental piece of art these books represent. A truly astounding feat of research + imagination
2/ These books gave me a different perspective, with Mars functioning as a mirror for Earth, allowing it to be seen objectively. It is a “template for a credible utopia...helping us think about re-engineering on a global scale, both social and natural conditions” (via Wikipedia)
3/ I found myself drawn out from a local and parochial way of thinking, into a solar system wide perspective that makes our problems much less dramatic, less all-consuming, and therefore more tractable. A one-world species can’t think clearly
4/ It’s an unusual style of sci-fi, neither soft nor hard but almost...technical. Endless pages dedicated to Martian geology, atmospheric gas composition, protobiology, hydrologic effects, genetic engineering. And not in a flashy gimmicky way, but actually extrapolating seriously
5/ Amazing that this work won a Hugo award by popular vote, despite such a strong scientific underpinning. As Robinson says in this interview, he thinks it’s because people want to have their intelligence respected and don’t need everything to be easy uctv.tv/shows/UCSD-Gue…
6/ He’s accomplished something that seems impossible today: the reanimation of science as a path of illumination, a reason for living even. Scientists are heroes, not because of action stunts, but because of careful observation and research leading to profound discoveries
7/ Robinson is one of the few progressive sci-fi writers, who as a group tend to be techno-libertarian. He writes futures that are realistic and high resolution, optimistic yet scientifically grounded, fantastic and yet plausible based on what we currently know
8/ In same interview above, Robinson describes his “Optimism as a political policy, because for us affluent Westerners to be pessimistic is an insult to the people of the world.” He describes it as an “angry optimism” of showing ppl how ecologically destructive modern life is
9/ “The advantage sci fi has is precisely that it is fiction; it does not pretend to predict what is really going to happen in the future, which is more in the bad realm of futurology, but rather presents possibilities” via theatlantic.com/entertainment/…
10/ The fiction and characters are also essential to delivering a message ppl can connect with, through story: 
11/ He sees sci-fi as inherently political, and doesn’t shy away from inserting his political opinions/theories into the story:
12/ And not just political, but inherently *liberal*, a bold statement in a genre dominated by ultra conservative writers like Heinlein:
13/ The blank canvas of Mars allows him to test out many political theories drawn from Earth’s past – from American Constitution, Swiss confederacy, guild socialism of Great Britain, Yugoslavian worker management, Mondragon ownership, Kerala land tenure, among others
14/ The greatest challenge, now as in 22nd century Mars, is to discover/invent what comes after capitalism. These systems seem much more plausible as alternatives to capitalism when deployed on literally a “new world,” free of the intertia of Mother Earth
15/ The outlines of a post-capitalist system, a fusion of modern progressive plus futuristic techno-scientific ecology, seem to include:
16/ In this @truthout article, R notes that “We live in a world that is a scientific achievement, and we can’t live without the scientific achievements,” that despite science being part of the cause of climate change, it must also be part of the solution truthout.org/articles/towar…
17/ It makes me think that the fate of the world kind of rests on whether we can make science interesting, accessible, relatable for average people. And that telling beautiful stories about what science makes possible must be a part of that
18/ I think science has a hard time with that, because these stories are fiction! The very thing that science needs to be accepted, is itself not scientific!
19/ But this is where I think the underlying emotion of science, that sense of wonder and awe and humility and discovery and love of truth, needs to come out from under the fear that we’ll contaminate the specimens, and become a central part of the culture of science
20/ Utopia is not a destination, but a process: The “experience of utopia is that of making such history: of working, believing, fighting, accepting and — before all and during all — imagining.”
