Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Finches of Mars
    Finches of Mars
    Finches of Mars
    Ebook229 pages3 hours

    Finches of Mars

    By Brian W. Aldiss

    2/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Colonists on Mars fight to prevent their own extinction in “a suspenseful genre-bending combination of straight SF and mystery” (Booklist, starred review).

    Doomed by overpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-ending war, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars represents humankind’s last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the red planet’s surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home world are attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corrupting influences of politics, art, and religion. Unable ever to return, these pioneers have chosen an unalterable path that winds through a landscape as terrible as it is beautiful, often forcing them to compromise their beliefs—and sometimes their humanity—in order to survive.
     
    But the gravest threat to the future is not the settlement’s total dependence on foodstuffs sent from a distant and increasingly uncaring Earth, or the events that occur in the aftermath of the miraculous discovery of native life on Mars—it is the fact that in the ten years since colonization began, every new human baby has been born dead, or so tragically deformed that death comes within hours.
     
    The great Brian W. Aldiss has delivered a dark and provocative yet ultimately hopeful magnum opus rich in imagination and bold ideas. A novel of philosophy as much as science fiction, Finches of Mars is an exploration of intellectual history, evolution, technology, and the future by one of speculative fiction’s undisputed masters.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateAug 4, 2015
    ISBN9781504005890
    Author

    Brian W. Aldiss

    Brian W. Aldiss was born in Norfolk, England, in 1925. Over a long and distinguished writing career, he published award‑winning science fiction (two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award); bestselling popular fiction, including the three‑volume Horatio Stubbs saga and the four‑volume the Squire Quartet; experimental fiction such as Report on Probability A and Barefoot in the Head; and many other iconic and pioneering works, including the Helliconia Trilogy. He edited many successful anthologies and published groundbreaking nonfiction, including a magisterial history of science fiction (Billion Year Spree, later revised and expanded as Trillion Year Spree). Among his many short stories, perhaps the most famous was “Super‑Toys Last All Summer Long,” which was adapted for film by Stanley Kubrick and produced and directed after Kubrick’s death by Steven Spielberg as A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Brian W. Aldiss passed away in 2017 at the age of 92. 

    Read more from Brian W. Aldiss

    Related to Finches of Mars

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Mutually Assured Destruction: Reading and Writing About Nuclear War

      Jan 24, 2018

      1. Imagine organizing a small get-together, a few friends and acquaintances at a neighborhood bar. It’s all very low-key. The day comes; friends arrive. You order cocktails. You chit-chat. In walks the President of the United States, with secret serv

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Space Between Worlds

      Aug 12, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 324 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Micaiah Johnson Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Fresh takes on sci-fi staples aren’t easy to find, but this debut novel from Micaiah Johnson pulls off a demanding and mind-bending approach to

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Inhibitor Phase

      Aug 11, 2021

      Inhibitor Phase
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Imperiled Planet

      Sep 3, 2024

      In this devastating and essential world history, Sunil Amrith sets out how we humans, during the past thousand years, have altered Earth and, often as not, ravaged it. “To have any hope of undoing the densely woven braid between inequality, violence,

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      SF Winners

      Aug 5, 2021

      The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners on the 2021 Locus Awards in June. The Locus, are along with the Hugo Awards the most significant US awards for science fiction and fantasy. The winners were: Science Fiction Novel, Network Ef

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Alien Encounters

      Nov 4, 2021

      In recent months, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life has been hotting up. Researchers examining data from the 2005 Cassini mission to Saturn have drastically increased the probability that there could be life on one of its moons, Encelad

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Vanished Birds

      Aug 12, 2020

      Starship captain Nia Imani returns home to one of the great trade Stations with an unexpected passenger who will change the course of history… Umbai’s Ark departed from the Colombian Elevator two years later, in early June. It was the third to leave

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bill And The Tooth Fairy

      Mar 10, 2021

      Bill believed in the Tooth Fairy. Big deal, you’re thinking. Lots of kids believe in the Tooth Fairy. Well, Bill wasn’t a kid. He was twenty-eight years old. You don’t believe it. My girlfriend Mary Beth didn’t believe it, either. We were having dinn

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Children Of Ruin

      May 22, 2019

      Children Of Ruin
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Shards Of Earth

      May 19, 2021

      Shards Of Earth
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The 10 Strangest Dystopias

      Oct 7, 2021

      With the daily news seeming apocalyptic and standard dystopias feeling a little tame, Lincoln Michel breaks down some of the strangest dystopian novels. The post The 10 Strangest Dystopias appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'Provenance': A Cozy Mystery Set In Ann Leckie's 'Ancillary' Universe

      Sep 27, 2017

      In this standalone novel, Ann Leckie returns to the world of her award-winning Ancillary trilogy with a different mission — a cozy mystery about the theft of some politically sensitive antiques.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Planets with the Giant Diamonds Inside

      Jul 7, 2021

      On the dark night of March 13, 1781, William Herschel settled down in his garden observatory in Bath, England, for a routine night of observing stars, when he noticed something out of place in the heavens. Through the eyepiece of his homemade 7-foot

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nophek Gloss

      Dec 2, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Essa Hansen Publisher Orbit Books Part Iain M Banks, part ’60s cosmic Marvel, this first entry in new series The Graven is an ambitious, but not entirely successful, debut. Set in a multiverse awas

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Also Out

      Jul 15, 2020

      Words have mystical power in Jay Posey’s space opera EVERY SKY A GRAVE (out now, Harper Voyager). Set in a future where mankind has mastered the Deep Language of the universe, it centres on an adept sent to a world that’s become corrupted. The world

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Sep 7, 2017

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Jul 18, 2019

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Death and Life of the Frontier: A Voyage to the Limits of the Knowable.: A voyage to the limits of the knowable.

      Aug 29, 2013

      Where does the world begin and where does it end? In many creation stories the Earth has well-defined edges. In early Mesopotamian mythology it is a flat disk floating in the ocean and surrounded by a circular sky. The Hopi people of northeastern Ari

      20 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tongue Stones

      May 27, 2022

      Tongue Stones
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Written In The Stars

      Nov 15, 2020

      Written In The Stars
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Buried in the Sky: Looking up to the Sky, a Young Astronomer Finds Truths at Her Feet.: Looking up to the sky, a young astronomer finds truths at her feet.

      Jul 11, 2013

      Our group of astronomers took in the naked mountains by the sea. We had flown into the La Serena airport at noon, and found a parched landscape. What sparse vegetation there was survived by drinking coastal fog. Sleeping dogs melted in the sun and do

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Finches of Mars

    2/5

    27 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This is not an easy book.

      Humans have established a colony on Mars. It's driven and funded by an international consortium of universities--the United Universities, or UU. The colony consists of six towers, of which the West, Chinese, and Sud-Am towers figure most prominently in the story. The colonists have been chosen for atheism and emotional stability. It's not altogether clear that they succeeded on the second point. Among the odd choices made is that the colonists get assigned computer-generated names, meaning nothing, to symbolize having cut their ties to Earth. It's as if they've established a sixties commune, more than a colony on Mars, in some respects.

      The big problem haunting the colonists is that, ten years in, they've had a long series of miscarriages and stillbirths and horribly deformed babies that didn't live even five minutes, but no successful live births. The colony seems doomed.

      Most of the action, which mostly consists of conversation and interior thoughts, is on Mars, but we also get interludes on Earth, where we learn that the colonists are probably in even more trouble than they realize. Earth is sinking into s growing series of wars--which include a successful invasion of eastern North America. The UU is getting tired of supporting a colony that seems doomed anyway.

      It isn't just the tough subject matter that makes this book hard to enjoy. It's clear that Mr. Aldiss dislikes, if not the human race, at least the 21st century. There are items called "screamers" which, in context, appear to most likely be cell phones. Some other items are called "shriekers," which might be tvs, or maybe something else. It appears that "partners" has completely displaced "husband/wife," which might imply an adoption of gender-neutral terminology, but no. The man in a couple is called the "partner," while the woman is the "partness." There is not one single likable, admirable, compelling, or even especially interesting character in the book. All the interest comes from their circumstances--though it can't be denied that a colony striving to survive on Mars is a pretty interesting circumstance.

      I do want to be clear that none, or at least very little, of this is a failure of writing. Aldiss hasn't lost it. This book surely has an audience, and audience that will think I am a nut with low tastes.

      I'm just not that audience.

      I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 3/5
      Received via NetGalley from the Open Road Media in exchange for an honest and completely unbiased review.

      Also posted on Silk & Serif

      Finches of Mars is the work of science fictions most eminent authors. I researched Aldiss upon completion of this book and learned that most of his books require analysis and intellectual musings. The concept of all the Universities in the world sending people to Mars to colonize only to discover child birth nearly impossible. Children are the future of any colonization effort, so how will they survive? Obviously, the effects of countless still births is an under explored concept. Unfortunately, perhaps Aldiss should have turned his eye to a different topic for his final book.

      Aldiss weaves a story that is at times incoherent and often feels like two books set into one. The author spends plenty of time on plenty of issues such as theology, philosophy and sociology but falls short in connecting all these ideas into a steady stream throughout the book. Although Aldiss compares the colonizers of Tharsis to the Galapagos Finches from Darwin's Origin of Species the ending does very little to sustain this collation.

      However, the book's messages are extremely relevant to today's concerns regarding global warming, over population and religious strife. The tacit writing style was thought provoking. However, the overall story line was weak because there was only a rarely revisited concept linking all these character's experiences together: Darwinism. The ending was abrupt and tried to link Darwinism to the Tharsis colony, but failed miserably. I didn't hate this book, it just lacked a common thread to link all the random character experiences together.

      My suggestion would be read this book when you want something to inspire thoughtfulness, but aren't particularly picky about the story arch being a common thread. This book would appeal to readers who enjoy science fiction, literary analysis, deep sociological issues, philosophy or Aldiss' earlier work.

      Farewell Brian W Aldiss from the realm of science fiction, you will be missed!
    • 2/5
      The sketches of well-known and respected artists are as sought-after as their more complete works of art. They convey the ideas and inspirations of the artist, the stages of development of the artist's conception and oeuvré, as well as displays of virtuoso technique. It is in this frame of mind that one must approach Finches of Mars. The work is a series of scenes with a soupçon of dialog and action, a collection of generously delineated ideas from the narrator/author. These are sketches of some problems a fledgling utopia might face when separated by time and distance from its parent civilization, in this case a nightmare dystopia on Earth brought on by overpopulation.

      Of course, lack of normal resources is a major concern - normal gravity, breathable air, potable water, native food, acceptable levels of radiation, etc. However, some of the most intransigent problems are found in the human psyche and libido, the problems the human race will bring with it, no matter how tightly circumscribed the selection criteria for potential colonists.

      Brian Aldiss goes a long way to carefully select his colonists in order to avoid the wars and disputations occurring on earth. Most particularly, they must be atheists or agnostics so as to avoid religious differences. They also must be highly intelligent and well educated, supposedly relying on logic rather than emotion to resolve conflicts, although that criteria needn't apply to people employed to do menial labor in the colony.

      Beyond the expected difficulties in this struggling community, Aldiss has posited that the effect of lesser gravity causes most fetuses to abort and any that survive until birth die within hours of delivery of the infant. This problem means that, unless it is successfully dealt with, the colony has no long term viability.

      This is a good setup for a novel. There are economic conflicts (dependency on the distant dystopian civilization for food and other resources), ecological conflicts, social conflicts and physical conflicts galore, even in a supposed utopia! What follows, though, is not a completed work of art; rather, it is a series of sketches of some of the kinds of events that could take place as the colonists face each of these conflicts. There is occasional dialog as a scene is set, sometimes some action. Maybe three-quarters of the content is the narrator, in a third-person omniscient point of view, describing, sketching, the current situation and its moral and ethical implications.

      The concepts are quite interesting, and if one accepts the restrictions used to select colonists, then the makings of an interesting novel are all present. The scenes are presented in a chronological order, but there are a couple of massive discontinuities. Due to these large gaps in time and to the large range of conflicts to address, character development is minimal. Rather, a sketch is presented of the driving force in several of the actors - sexual urges, forsaken love, spirituality. Interestingly, it is all of these physical and emotional forces which provide the conflicts in these hyper-intelligent mentally-centered colonists.

      This is an interesting sketchbook of ideas, placed in a tentative plot-order by the major conflict of the lack of viable birth on Mars. The play of morality and ethics when emotional drives lead to conflicts in an intellectual environment is quite tantalizing. But a completed masterpiece, this is not. One can only wish that Aldiss would take this rich store of ideas and sketches and complete it, turning it into a novel where the characters develop beyond their original raison d'être and demonstrate by their actions and dialogue how they resolve their many conflicts, rather than having a narrator/author describe the development and resolution of each. But as a sketchbook of Brian Aldiss' inspirations, concepts, techniques and fertile mind, it is worth reading, exploring and enjoying.

      I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      Years ago, when I was still learning what science fiction is, a Bulgarian publisher decided to translate and make available the Helliconia Trilogy. I loved it. It made me appreciate what Aldiss can do when he puts his mind to it.

      Unfortunately he seems to have forgotten how to do that. The story should have been a good one - humanity made it to Mars, made colonies and is surviving. And all would have been great if babies could be born - but all of them die - most before birth, some after birth. But they never survive - and without it, the world really do not belong to the humans.

      There are passages that hint at what Aldiss can do and the story is heart-breaking. But far more often, it is disjointed and alogical, sounding more as an exercise or a rough draft. How exactly that could happen in such a novel is beyond me. The saving grace of the whole book are the ideas - they are there, underdeveloped but still visible. And the high expectations for the last SF novel of one of the best authors did not help - a lot of my frustration was because of this - I would have accepted some of it from a new author that is still learning the craft - or at least I would have accepted it a bit better.

      I think I need to go and reread the Helliconia Trilogy - I really do not want to have "Finches of Mars" as my last memory of Aldiss.
    • 1/5
      Brian W. Aldiss has stated that Finches of Mars is his final science fiction novel, and all I can say is, "Thank God!" He was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999; while his earlier work (none of which I have read) may be stellar, he is now, at 90, clearly resting on his laurels because Finches of Mars is a disjointed and virtually unreadable disaster.

      I probably should have paid closer attention to the book's description on NetGalley before requesting an ARC. The publisher states that it is "[a] novel of philosophy as much as science fiction," and that is exactly how it comes across: as a random series of philosophical musings with no real plot and little connection beyond the same cast of cold and boring characters. As to the first point (randomness), consider this passage:

      "He got up to make for Kinshasa, and work, and study. His nose was still bleeding.

      Food rations were getting smaller, but they had no worries about water shortages; or rather, they had not thought to worry about its running out: soundings had shown that the cavern containing the subterranean water was vast."

      Given the absence of any transition whatsoever between these two paragraphs, one might be forgiven for believing that both the bleeding nose and the food shortage occurred at the same time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, yet the concluding reference to a cavern of subterranean water abruptly notifies the reader that we are now on Mars, miles and years away from the blow Rasir received from his uncle.

      As to the second point (unbelievable characters), upon returning from an expedition during which they discovered possible evidence of a previous life form on Mars's surface, the colonists' first priority is not to engage in scientific analysis, but to argue over what word they should use for

      "the new emotion many of them experienced on this occasion when walking on Mars. Eventually they decided to adopt metanipoko. An intensity of regret and delight. Stroy ventured to suggest selbsthilfloszwang. It was considered but not adopted. . . . Several people came up to Stroy after the meeting to say they regretted her new word had not been adopted."

      Seriously? If all conversations on Mars were this trivial, no wonder some of the universities supporting the colony withdrew their funding, leading to the smaller food rations which concerned Rasir two chapters earlier.

      Or what about this conversation between a doctor and her dying patient:

      "She held his hand, regarding him gravely. "Are we in some way a dream of the cosmos? Although it goes against my profession, I mean the profession of healing, I sometimes find myself inclining to a belief that we are insubstantial beings.

      He blinked at her, acknowledging that indeed he was a prime example of an insubstantial being."

      I suspect the patient's blink was not an acknowledgement of his insubstantiality, but an indication of his perplexity over the identity of the nut holding his hand.

      Aldiss fans may want to read Finches of Mars for completeness; those looking for a good story with relatable characters should go elsewhere.

      I received a free copy of Finches of Mars through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      The only good thing you can say about this novel is that it’s better than White Mars. Essentially, this is a rewriting of that 1999 utopian novel co-written with Sir Roger Penrose.

      This may be advertised as an environmental dystopian novel with Earth a mess from war, global warming, bee colony collapse, overpopulation, environmental disaster, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and ignorance. Humanity’s colony on Mars, improbably run and sponsored by a consortium of universities, the United Universities, may be threatened by women being unable to give birth.

      This, though, is ultimately a utopian novel. The Martian colony is about Mankind Achieving a Renewed Society.

      Like all utopian works, we get a list of what’s wrong with our world and the solutions. Aldiss is a good enough writer where he abbreviates these sections and has characters give counterarguments. But the arguments are too brief to be convincing, the characters who give them so numerous and thinly described that only two hydrologists, the first men on Mars, are in any way memorable or even distinguishable from the rest of the Martian crowd.

      We get Martian life of a decidedly plausible nature instead of the ludicrous moving mountain of Mons Olympus in White Mars. Aldiss, who has long returned to evolutionary themes in his career, talks about evolution here, but he seems to falter. Are we to see the Martian society as a sort of organism speciating from general humanity, Hamiltonian fitness at work via a carefully (though, it turns out, not so much) group of people?. Or are we to see the evolution happening on the individual level in which case, by analogy, he’s given us Lamarckism and not Darwinian evolution? We also seem to be a bit shy about saying races are subspecies of man that have, by definition, significantly different traits manifested, partly, in their history.

      At least we are spared the boring, cheap mysticism of White Mars and its talk of particle physics.

    Book preview

    Finches of Mars - Brian W. Aldiss

    Finches of Mars

    Brian W. Aldiss

    For my grandsons in the future Laurence and Thomas

    (Thomas who was the first person to read this discourse)

    And to Jason and Max and Ben

    and of course Archie with my love.

    All those who prefer to whatever degree the hypothetical over what is called reality, finding the real so deplorable that they seek out what may never be, will find here elements for enjoyment. Those optimists who grieve over the shortcomings of existence may like to imagine that better prospects will be created in the future, not least amid the airless deserts of Mars depicted here.

    He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, and yet does not admit how vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.

    — Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by

    Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation

    of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

    Your idea regarding the effect of gravity on foetal development is absolutely fascinating, and is of much interest to me …

    There is a great deal of knowledge in the field of foetal development about the importance of physical distorting forces on inducing foetal growth, making your idea of lighter gravity affecting foetal life entirely feasible (and to the best of my knowledge absolutely original to boot). Further, the effect of changes of gravity on heart action and blood flow is also fascinating, especially since the foetus is not as well equipped as is its mother.

    So, malformed foetuses being at risk of dying in utero or at birth is a plausible conjecture.

    —Professor Frank Manning

    Division of Maternal Foetal Medicine

    New York Medical College

    New York

    1

    An Oceanless World

    The word ‘scenery’ was not in use on Mars. One might talk instead of ‘the prospect’.

    The prospect was modestly dramatic. Volcanoes on this section of Tharsis were small and scattered. The settlement site on the Tharsis Shield had been chosen for its underground water supply and its comparative smoothness. A path had been worn leading eastwards a short way. A man and woman were walking side-by-side along the path, treading with the high-kneed gait the lower gravity of Mars encouraged. The pair were thickly dressed and wore face masks, since they were beyond the atmospheric confines of the project settlement.

    This constitutional exercise, though remarkable enough, had come about by events and arrangements of some complexity, inspired in large part by the findings of the NASA experimental vehicle, Curiosity­, in 2012 AD—when both of these new Martians were not even conceived. Rooy and Aymee were taking their daily exercise. They had discovered in the austerities of this derelict planet something they had sought without discovering in their previous lives. No air: perfect vision—clarity of sight and mind. Martian orange-grey sterility. Aymee, dark of skin and outspoken, always declared that Mars served as a physical manifestation of the support system of the subconscious.

    The great spread of an oceanless world surrounded them. Such water as there was flowed hidden underground. As usual, the couple had walked until the brow of Olympus Mons showed like consciousness above the horizon

    They were walking now between two volcanoes, believed to be extinct, Pavonis Mons and, to the south, Arsia Mons, passing quite close to the rumpled base of the former. In one of these small fissures they had found a little clump of cyanobacteria which added to the interest of their walk. They believed it to be a mark of an ancient underground waterway.

    Their progress was slow; Rooy had his left leg encased in plaster, setting a broken bone.

    Little Phobos, having risen in the west, was at present speeding above the Shield. Sight of it was obscured by a wind that carried fine dust. The dust and the distant star, Sol, low on the landscape, gave a dull golden aspect to everything.

    ‘I was wondering about our contentment,’ Aymee said. ‘If we weren’t under some odd compulsion to come here? Or if we’re not here and are experiencing some form of delusion? Reality can be rather tenuous up here.’

    ‘And not only here,’ said Rooy, chuckling.

    Back on Earth, one of the screamers had run an opinion poll about the six towers in the Martian settlement. The towers were graded as follows:

    CHINESE: MOST ELABORATE

    WEST: MOST LEARNED

    RUSS-EAST: MOST ARTISTIC

    SINGA-THAI: MOST EXCLUSIVE

    SCAND: MOST SPARTAN

    SUD-AM: MOST EXOTIC

    ‘Maybe there’s something to be said for making it up as you go along,’ said Aymee. ‘How do they know what it feels like to be here?’

    ‘It’s nice to know we’re still in the news, however conjectural.’

    ‘Conjectural? More like a sideshow.’

    ‘I wake up every morning to marvel,’ said Rooy.

    ‘And sleep every evening to snore.’

    ‘Was it the twentieth century author, someone Burgess, who said, Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you snore alone?’

    ‘Anthony, I believe. Anyhow, you’ve told me that one before.’

    They fell silent. Something in the ambience of the prospect engendered silence. Some found this ambience alarming, some a delight—if a delight of an uncertain kind.

    It was Rooy who spoke next.

    ‘You know what I miss most?’ he said. ‘Rajasthan.’

    ‘Rajasthan!’ Aymee exclaimed. She had been born there of a high caste Hindu family. ‘Parts of Tharsis remind me of parts of Rajasthan.’

    She thought only of the sandy reaches, where the odd goat might be found, and not of the fecund regions where deer ran and rutted among acacia trees.

    The West tower loomed ahead of them. It did not stand alone. All told, the six towers had been built within sight of each other: not close enough to form an illusion of ‘togetherness’, yet still near enough to each other to make, as it might be, a statement of intent—that humanity had arrived at last, and was trying to form something more than a mere voice crying in the wilderness.

    And those voices … The UU had created linguistic rather than political bases for each site.

    A number of pipes led in from the wilds into the basement of the West’s building; the water they carried had been charted by Operation Horizon over a year previously. Methane plumes escaping from under the planetary crust were trapped to serve heating and cooking requirements. This development, as with the towers themselves, and the whole Mars enterprise, was funded by the UU. The settlement thus remained ever dependent on terrestrial liberality.

    Liberality. Something else absorbed into the unceasing terrestrial power struggle: a tap easily turned off.

    Confronting the grey tower, Rooy said, ‘Back to the subterranean life …’ He was a machinist and spent much of his life underground.

    Once Aymee and Rooy were inside the confinement zone they could remove their masks and breathe shallowly. In a year or two—or maybe three—the modest area of contained atmosphere would have approached normal limits. The six towers stood in this zone under a large friction-stir welding dome; from this leaked an atmosphere consisting mainly of nitrogen, mixed with 21.15% oxygen. The circular zone guard retained most of the gas. Still, few people cared to stay unmasked outside the towers for long.

    As Aymee punched in their code, she said, ‘Another new word needed there. Subterranean can’t be right.’

    The gate was opened by the door guardian, a man called Phipp, who hustled the pair in. Guardianship was considered to be an important post. Blood, pulse and eyesight readings had to be taken by automatic machines within the warlike confinement of the gatehouse before anyone from outside was allowed to move freely inside.

    This entailed a delay of only 55 seconds, unless the automatics detected reasons for stoppage and possible treatment; nevertheless this precautionary delay was widely resented. Resented, although Mars imposed its own delay on the passage of time. Aymee and Rooy waited at the tower gate, hand in hand.

    2

    A Freedom

    ‘Sub specie aeternitatis—that’s us,’ said Noel, who had been elected more or less as Director of the West tower. ‘We have "aeternitatis" all round us in trumps. Our function is to occupy—what?—emptiness. And to discuss those abstract and vital questions that have vexed humanity since … well, since the first human-like babe fell out of a vague quaternary tree. Who would like to kick off?’

    The woman to whom a terrestrial computer had allotted the name Sheea said, ‘Are we the elite or the rejects, Noel?’

    Noel raised a delicate eyebrow. ‘I prefer to think of us as the elite.’

    ‘Here we are on Tharsis Shield, parked in six towers—we were so proud of being chosen for this extraordinary exile—is this indeed the honour we imagine it to be? Or do you think we have been dumped here so as not to interfere with the villainies brewing on Earth?’

    ‘Not a question you can usefully ask,’ said Noel. She spoke lightly, knowing Sheea faced the challenges of pregnancy.

    The possibilities of a wise and peaceful terrestrial future had been destroyed by vicissitudes of fortune and the accidents of history. Only occasionally on the planet Earth do we find a nation at peace with itself and its neighbours. The quest for happiness—in itself not a particularly noble occupation—has in general been overcome by a lust for riot and slaughter. Violent and vengeful nations have arisen, seething with illiterates enslaved by ancient writings.

    The more peevish the nation, the more primitive its preaching.

    Occasionally one finds states where all seems quiet and without disturbance; these in the main prove to be police states, where disagreement is ruthlessly suppressed, and only the most powerful have freedom of movement to a limited degree.

    On the planet Mars it is different.

    But of course Mars is not over-populated.

    The human settlement on Mars has its share of human woes. But here for once sagacity prevails, perhaps because the occupants of the various towers are so few, and have been so carefully selected.

    Noel in her bed at night thinks always of the great Mangalian.

    These chosen persons living on the Shield must succeed or die. They have signed a contract making it impossible for them to return to the planet from which, in either the name of advancement or adventure, they have voluntarily exiled themselves.

    Many small restrictions apply here. Nothing may be wasted, not even human dung. No pets at all may be kept in the towers. Recreational drugs are not available, and may not be used if found.

    The scarcity of oxygen and the increased distance from a volatile sun may contribute to the stability of the Martian venture. The mentality of these exiles, as we shall see, has been liberated by their freedom from belief in the dictates of an inscrutable god.

    3

    Mangalian’s Remark

    To be on Mars …

    This almost evolutionary step owes its existence to a small group of learned and wise men and women. Working at the end of the previous century, and spurred on to begin with by the provocation of the great Herbert Amin Saud Mangalian, the universities of the cultivated world linked themselves together under a charter which in essence represented a great company of the wise, the UU (for United Universities). The despatch of the two hydrologists to our nearby planet was the first UU move.

    Mangalian spent a profligate youth on San Salvador, the island off Cuba, fathering several children on several women. The edict ‘Go forth and multiply’ was his inspiration. Only when he met and married Beth Gul—both taking delight in this antiquated ceremony—did he reform, encouraged by her loving but disputatious nature. For a while he and Beth severed their connections with others. They read and studied; they led a rapt hermit’s life.

    Together, the two of them wrote a book from which great consequences sprang. It was entitled The Unsteady State or, Starting Again from Scratch.* As was the fashion, this volume contained moving video and screamer shots married into the text. It argued that humanity on Earth was doomed, and that the only solution was to send our best away, where they could strive—on Mars and beyond—to achieve true civilization. It was sensationalist, but persuasive.

    The declaration alarmed many in the West and infuriated many more in the Middle-East, as is generally the way when truth is plainly stated. It brought Mangalian to public attention.

    He was an attractive young fellow, tall, sinewy, with a mop of jet black hair—and a certain gift of the gab.

    It was only after his remark, ‘Countless lungs, countless penises, all working away! We shall run out of oxygen before we run out of semen!’ that Mangalian’s name became much more widely known, and his book more attentively read. ‘Semen is always trendy,’ he told an interviewer, by way of explanation.

    ‘A handsome fellow’ was how many people expressed in their various languages admiration and envy of Mangalian. Using his book as both inspiration and guide, several intellectuals made tentative efforts to link universities as the first step towards civilization elsewhere. There was no doubt that Mangalian was a vital advocate for a new association—the UU. While there were many who enthused over the idea of the UU, almost as many—in the main those living in slums, tents and sink estates—raged against its exclusivity.

    So Mangalian, a youth with no university degree, became head, figurehead, of the newly formed UU. He was aware that any sunshine of global attention had its rapid sunset. Invited to England, he attracted representatives from the three leading universities, to shower them with challenges to unite.

    ‘All know you to be a footballing nation, but Q.P.R. and Q.E.D.* should not be adversarial. A ball in the net is great—so is the netting of new facts.’ He was being facile, but his argument scored a goal. The first three universities raised the purple and blue flag of the UU.

    But a left wing politician remarked, ‘So, the words come from Oxford, but the cash comes from China …’ It was certainly true, although not widely admitted, that NASA projects were nowadays kept afloat on Beijing currency—it was unlikely to be little different with the UU.

    Under the goading of the young impresario Mangalian, many universities agreed to join the first three, to create a nation-like body of new learning, a corpus aloof from the weltering struggles of an underfed, under-educated and unreasoning range of random elements: the sick, the insane, the suicide-bombers and their like. Mangalian disliked this division. It was then he spoke for the colonisation of Mars. MARS, he said, stood for ‘MANKIND ACHIEVING (a) RENEWED SOCIETY.’ Some laughed, some jeered. But the movers at last moved.

    Even before all the various universities had finished signing on their various dotted United lines, an exploration duo was sent out to inspect Martian terrain. The terrain had been photographed previously, but trodden by a human’s boot—never.

    Operation Horizon consisted of two men and a robotruck. Modest though this expedition was, the future of an entire enterprise depended on it. If no watercourses were detected, then the great UU initiative was sunk as surely as the Titanic; if water was detected, and in sufficient quantities, then the project would proceed. Everything depended on two skilled hydrologists and a new-fangled robotruck, designed especially for the task.

    The truck could be spoken to by screamer from a kilometre’s distance. It was loaded with equipment. It also gave two men shelter in the chill sleep hours and enabled them to refill their oxygen tanks.

    While electronics experts and eager young engineers worked on the truck, various hydrology experts were being interviewed. One of the men given the okay was the experienced Robert Prestwick, fifty-six years of age, and

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1