Teaching Mars Literature

Abstract

The paper describes an upper-division university course in Mars literature taught online since Fall 2013. The course readings comprise six novels relating to Mars. Authors include H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Phillip K. Dick, Greg Bear, and Kim Stanley Robinson. After an introduction, sections of the paper discuss course organization and syllabus, Americanist conceptual approaches, anti-colonialism, habitat sustainability, and pedagogical possibilities for future discussion of Mars literature. The paper argues for a fiction-based approach to understanding historical and potential future relationships with Mars and Mars science.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Synopsis of course

Table 3 Course schedule

Appendix 2

Sample discussion topic:

Module 5: Bear, Moving Mars — Discuss (required) The motive for the expedition in the film Red Planet is that humanity has polluted the Earth to the point of irredeemable toxicity. Long-distance efforts to terraform Mars into habitability have been attempted but seem to be failing. The goal of the expedition is to learn why this has happened. Highly improbable plot incidents (e.g., a ready-to-go Russian rescue vehicle parked in walking distance on the Mars surface) bring us to a triumphant conclusion that affirms an individual and collective human capacity to overcome the most daunting of technological challenges. If you have read Andy Weir’s The Martian or seen the film version (which is quite faithful to the novel, unlike John Carter), the focus on the actual science rather than Bear’s fanciful take on a genetically and nanotechnology enhanced future evokes a powerful message of technological determinism. In your opinion, to what extent do such films either inspire or delude viewers about the viability of Mars as an alternative to environmental catastrophe and corporate empire on Earth? Do the novels Moving Mars and Red Mars (for those who have read ahead) undertake similar work? To what extent are such Mars films and novels inspirational science fiction sermons and to what extent do they announce a possible future? Discuss.

Sample comprehensive exam question (final exam):

A common theme in all of the Mars literature we have read in this course is that of the frontier, or perhaps more accurately, the frontier myth. In Moving Mars and Red Mars, the authors grapple with the more scientifically based evidence of Mars as a “dry” and “lifeless” planet. This plays nicely into the notion of the “frontier” as virgin, unspoiled, pristine environment in which humans can enter absolved of the guilt of their past — a clean slate if you will. Drawing on Heise’s “Martian Ecologies and the Future of Nature,” and Robinson’s (2011) “Martian Musings and the Miraculous Conjunction,” and from the video lectures and other critical readings, analyze and discuss the connections between environment, frontier, wet and dry, and biology in these novels and how the authors employ Science Fiction not only as a form of entertainment, but as a “red mirror” on human society and our environmental concerns.