The Long Way Around: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora

I first came across Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy in a reference in The Science of the Discworld which claimed it offered a realistic depiction of how Mars could be terraformed. At the time, that statement was correct. Over the course of three books, Red, Green, and Blue Mars, Robinson demonstrated, with his admirable knack for hard science fiction, how what we knew about the Red Planet indicated it could be transformed into an inhabitable world through concerted efforts that included such bold steps as guiding comets into the upper atmosphere. In 2008, however, the Phoenix lander found signs of high concentrations of perchlorate salts in the Martian regolith, concentrations that are likely to be toxic to humans. Robinson’s model for the colonisation of Mars is no longer viable. To his credit Robinson has embraced the knowledge gained in humanity’s ongoing exploration of Mars, and in the far future of his more recent Aurora Mars is a barren world.

The Mars Trilogy was about the destination, and its impact on humanity, Aurora is all about the journey. At the book’s heart is the approach of a generation starship, known only as Ship, to its destination star system, Tau Ceti. Ship, and its crew, has travelled the vast gulf between the stars, they are the first wave of humanity’s collective efforts to spread across the galaxy.

Robinson’s recognition that terraforming Mars will take much longer than we had hoped cleaves Aurora from his Mars trilogy in a far greater manner than his previous quasi-sequel 2312, where the relationship was left ambiguous. Aurora is not the future of the Mars trilogy, yet it is not entirely separate either. It is perhaps best thought of as a reimagining which reflects the evolution of Robinson’s thinking and of human knowledge. Here again are themes of environmental sustainability, the impact of the environment on societies, and social justice. These are themes Robinson has explored on Mars, in Antarctica, and in Washington DC beset by the catastrophic impacts of climate change. Now he finds a place for them between the stars. Robinson it seems has a story written in his soul that he is desperately trying to tell, reimagining our future time and again, and we are better for it.

For those that love the Mars trilogy, myself included, it can be pleasant but disorientating to find reminders of this other world, other future, scattered throughout Aurora. An artificial intelligence is called Pauline, the name of the AI companion of Red Mars protagonist John Boone. When characters part ways for the final time they whisper “wherever you go, there we are”, the same phrase Blue Mars protagonist Jackie Boone scratched on the floor before she left the solar system. And when we are finally told of the solar system, we find it familiar, with colonies on the Jovian moons and the city of Terminator gradually rolling around Mercury’s dawn.

The inclusion of familiar themes and characteristics can however, be deceptive. Aurora reaches far beyond the confines of Robinson’s now familiar solar system. In the Mars trilogy Robinson invented a genetic longevity treatment to stretch the lives of his original protagonists across a long arc, a treatment that allowed Jackie Boone to hope to reach a system twenty light years from our own within her elongated lifetime. The treatment was present but unremarked on in 2312, and is conspicuously absent from Aurora. Without the Treatment the stars are snached away, beyond the reach of a single lifetime. In the course of Ship’s long journey to the Tau Ceti system it must sustain six generations, only the first and last of whom will ever know worlds other than Ship.

Robinson’s earlier works rang with the power of audacious human spirit. With dedication, science, and engineering nothing was impossible; humanity would follow its manifest destiny across the stars. Aurora is darker. Ship is a prison for generations that had no choice in being born into their mission. It is an island amongst the stars, but an island that is too small to sustain a population sufficient to perpetuate the diversity that his humanity’s strength. By the book’s opening, the population of Ship is showing the genetic strains of their journey including shrinking heights and gradually slipping IQs. These woes, the consequence of a small closed population, are evidence that though Ship is comprised of twenty four distinct biomes, replicating environments from Earth, it is not enough.Ship’s biomes seeming vast to those that have known no other world; until they do.

Six generations have given their whole lives, their whole purposes, to the task of reaching Tau Ceti whether or not they chose to. Arrival has been the dream that sustained an entire culture. But reality is never what we dream it will be. Arthur C Clarke famously said of the prospect of alien life, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Clarke was talking about sentient alien life. Robinson is worried about far simpler forms of life. The human body is notoriously vulnerable to unknown pathogens; history is full of grim reminders of the catastrophic impact for populations encountering new bacteria and viruses. What then might the impact be on our bodies of even the most basic life from beyond our solar system? Perhaps we should avoid seeking worlds capable of sustaining life in case they already do? Robinson’s dread is that planets devoid of the building blocks of life might take millennia to terraform; while those that are suitable for life, the planets we seek even today, might be poison to our fragile bodies. These fears are only the beginnings of the immense challenges to spreading beyond our home system; challenges the population of Ship will encounter on their arrival in Tau Ceti.

As M wrote recently, science fiction plays an important role in human endeavour. Where our dreams go we will seek to follow. For a long time Robinson has embraced and fostered this belief, but in Aurora he considers the prospect that we may dream of places we cannot reach. He presents the harsh truth: that this solar system might be both our cradle and our prison.

For all its ideas, and provocative musings, Robinson has not lost sight of telling a good story. His enticing narrative style is well practiced, and here, with bold pioneers reaching to the edge of human ability, he is on ground well-suited to him. It will be enjoyed by those who devour the ‘hard’ science fiction Robinson has made his trade, but also by those for whom Robinson’s approach to science fiction, his optimism and faith in the progression of humanity has been a bit much in the past. These readers, who might have previously bounced of Robinson’s writing might find in the grimmer reality of Aurora’s future a world that is more familiar.

-H