The Theoretical Foundation of Utopian Radical Democracy in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Blue Mars."(Critical Essay‪)‬

One of the more promising literary utopias in recent years to offer a close and careful reconsideration of how the democratic political process might be redefined and thus revitalized is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Robinson depicts in detail the establishment and development of what becomes a clear alternative to Earth's political and environmental quagmire, as the ever-increasing population of Martian colonists slowly formulates a radically new and empowering sense of politics. His extensive attention to the political process I read as something much more significant, however, than a mere literary fantasy, being rather a genuine contribution to the problem of democratic struggle in our time and place. In his many interviews Robinson has regularly made statements such as, "I consider my books to be a political work.... There's got to be a utopian strand, there's gotta be positive stories. You can criticize over and over again, but it also helps to have some vision of what should happen" (Smith). In particular the Mars trilogy is Robinson's attempt to comment on present-day Terran challenges. This thematic objective is stated by the character Ann Clayborne while visiting Earth in the third and concluding segment, Blue Mars: the Martian experiment was "a chance here to make something different. That was the whole point" (23). The point is reemphasized by Nadia's comment that the Martian government could well be employed as a role model for Terrans because it is "a small-scale model. Easier to understand" (148). Despite Fredric Jameson's remark that the trilogy "will surely be the great political novel of the 1990s" (The Seeds of Time 65), however, Robinson's Martian political model has attracted little critical attention. (1) Phillip E. Wegner, for example, while asserting recently that Robinson has created an "important new utopian trilogy" (Wegner xx), offers no commentary, nor has Tom Moylan gone beyond applauding in general terms "Robinson's masterwork, the Martian trilogy" (Scraps of the Untainted Sky 320n2). Shaun Huston, in a passing comment, suggests that Robinson's political model may be indebted to the work of Murray Bookchin, but presents no details (177). (2) A more detailed explication is Carol Franko's general theoretical meditation on the Martian political process in the first two-thirds of the trilogy (the concluding part had not yet appeared at the time of her essay), especially as it contributes to "the theme of utopian destiny" (64). While her discussion certainly illuminates some dimensions of the polyphonic nature of the political process present in the first two volumes, Franko's application of Bahktin's notions of dialogism, polyphony, and carnival cannot be extended to the final volume of the trilogy, nor would such a methodology elucidate Robinson's precisely articulated Martian political vision. Perhaps the most useful commentary is provided by Jameson, who clarifies how "all of the scientific problems described in the novel, without exception, offer an allegory, by way of the form of overdetermination, of social, political and historical problems" ('"If I Find One Good City I Will Spare the Man"' 210-11). While his reading of the opposition between the actants of Hiroko as "virtual (Mars) goddess" and Ann as "political symbol (and a virtual allegory)" (222) goes far toward revealing the dialectical "political preoccupation of the work" (227), he specifically identifies only minimal elements from Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia as possible parallels to Robinson's political vision (223), and names no other theorists. (3)