Phenomenologies of Mars: Exploring Methods for Reading the Scientific Planetext Of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy

Abstract

In 2013, The New Yorker Magazine called Kim Stanley Robinson ‘one of the greatest living science-fiction writers’. And in 2008, Time Magazine named him a ‘hero of the environment.’[1] Yet, no lengthy study has yet been attempted on any of his fiction. This thesis aims to redress this absence with a long-form reading of one of the high peaks of his achievement: the Mars Trilogy. It considers that what I am calling the ‘planetext’ (or planet-text) is a vital narrative space. It assumes the perspectival form in which the Trilogy is told is crucial to understanding how its planetexts are read. The several viewpoints in the Trilogy comprise the several attempts of this thesis toward understanding not only how the planet is used in the novels, but also how it arranges and functions according to textual principles of readability. My several readings adopt the scientific bases of each of these viewpoints, and develops a sense of the way different characters experience the planet around them as either enabled by science, or confounded by it. ‘Planetext’ is therefore a useful neologism for interpreting how such a vast and multidimensional site as Mars is, or is not, encountered through these sciences. Understanding the planetext of Mars is therefore a phenomenological task, with the requirement of reading how each character is able, or unable, to experience and comprehend their experiences. A sense of the phenomenologies of Mars means this thesis must take the approach of seeing how different sciences yield different phenomenologies, and different experiences of the planet. By calling Mars a planetext, this thesis investigates the ways in which language, writing, and textuality participate in building the planet of the Trilogy, treating writing as a coefficient of terraforming. Understood as a kind of planetography, or planetary writing, the planetext (or host of planetexts) foregrounds the written-ness of the Martian space in Robinson’s Trilogy. The planetextual space of the novels shapes a variety of readerly paths through the narrative, which are in turn adopted. As a long study, this thesis understands the planet as a sizeable arena, which challenges the view any one reading can give of it. Acknowledging this as a limitation, its four chapters focus only on four characters, aiming to supplement an overview style of reading the Trilogy with a series of close readings. Understanding the textual status of the planet means paying specific attention to how characters either find meaningful access to the planet, or fail to find any. For Ann Clayborne, a geologist who wants to keep Mars uncontaminated and un-colonized, the planetext forms itself as a zone of différance, in which the task of interpreting the non-living planet must coincide with her resistance to the terraforming project. With Michel Duval, the Martian psychiatrist, readability is itself questioned as he attempts to overcome his depression and homesickness. For Saxifrage Russell, one of the chief terraformers, a discussion over scientific method takes the path of this thesis away from the troubling and compromised planetexts of Ann and Michel, toward how textual meaning is enabled and opened. With Hiroko Ai, a final theorization of what I call viridical force is proposed as a planetextual function, based around the Trilogy’s mention of viriditas and Jacques Derrida’s idea of force, to come to terms with how the planet makes itself available to the reader as expansive, rich in possible meaning, and always arranging itself around the reader. Between the opening of the planetext and its equivocations, this thesis charts its course. [1] Tim Kreider, ‘Our Greatest Living Novelist?’ December 12, 2013. The New Yorker Magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/our-greatest-political-novelist; Oliver Morton, ‘Kim Stanley Robinson: Heroes of the Environment 2008,’ Wednesday September 24, 2008. Time Magazine. http://content.time.com/ time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841779_1841803,00.html