Brian Aldiss: White Mars

I have no communication with the person who was my mother. She lives on Iapetus, out by Saturn. But I will zeep this note to her for her mother’s record of ancient times. Frankly, the thought of womb-birth amuses me. How clumsy and inefficient it was, and how inconvenient for womankind! We do not have families.

Our Jovian generations are now all of extra-uterine extraction, apart from the subbermans. E-u techniques have enabled us to combine pseuplant life into our genes; when our lungs breathe out, our foliagics breathe in; what the foliagics emit, we breathe in.

Thus we are almost entirely independent of atmosphere suits for long periods. We are a mathematical people. By the end of their first year, infants can calculate the orbits of most matrix bodies we observe orbiting about us.

Having trained Chimborazo to spawn, we now have small Chimbos with us everywhere. We benefit from their acute diagnostic powers. Indeed, it can be claimed that human and Chimbos form a symbiotic species.

Together, we and Chimbos are planning to voyage out into the universe, far beyond the heliopause. We hope to call it to account. Because we are Utopians, we can do this. One can proudly say that the human race, risen from lowly and irrational forms, with a mind, in Darwin’s words, once as low as that of the lowest animal, has at last become REASONABLE.

The peoples of the Earth, represented through the United Nationalities, do hereby make provision for the human settlement of our sister planet, Mars, consistent with respect for its equal status with the nations of Earth within the solar system.

The United Nationalities, recognising the fragility of the Martian environment and acutely conscious of our present ignorance of the capability of its ecosystem to sustain physical incursion and change, hereby agrees:

Art. I: All nations comprising the United Nationalities do individually and collectively disclaim any territorial rights of ownership or control over any portion of the planet Mars or its airspace. Equally they bind themselves to reject any such claims that may in future be asserted by any political entity on the planet Earth.

Art. II: Mars shall be governed by the United Nationalities as a trusteeship, held in trust for the entire population of Earth. It shall be treated as a single entity, and never subdivided and subject to different regimes. The environment of Mars shall be regarded as sacrosanct; any large-scale projects that threaten its individual character shall be prohibited, at least until such time as the entire globe has been scientifically explored and studied.

Art. III: In light of the severe limitations on its ability to sustain the intrusion of an alien civilisation, human settlement of Mars shall be strictly limited in numbers and subject to qualifications by the United Nationalities. While it is accepted that member states may select exclusively their own nationals for their share of any settlement quota, they shall observe the principles of non-discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex and religious or political opinion in their selection.

Art. IV: All questions of economic or other relations with the settlement established on Mars shall be conducted with the delegates of the United Nationalities, who shall be ever mindful of their trusteeship obligations.

Art. V: Mars shall be used for peaceful purposes only. All activities of a military nature, such as the establishment of bases or fortifications, or the testing of any type of weapons, are absolutely prohibited. Serious scientific projects that find the Martian environment advantageous to their researches are not prohibited.

Art. VI: The disposal of waste products generated on Earth, of any kind, is absolutely prohibited. The exiling of criminal elements from Earth to Mars is also prohibited.

Art. VII: The United Nationalities shall appoint observers whose function is to ensure compliance with the foregoing provisions. The observers shall enjoy full freedom of access at all times to any installation or structure established on Mars.

Plans are already afoot to send human beings to Mars. Behind these exciting possibilities lies a less worthy objective: an assumption that the Red Planet can be turned into something resembling a colony, an inferior Earth. This operation would extend prevailing dystopian tendencies into the next century.

Planets are environments with their own integrity. Any vast engineering schemes would be invasive. The end result could only be to turn Mars into a dreary suburb, imitating the less attractive features of terrestrial cities. A military-industrial complex would probably rule over it.

APIUM stands for humanity’s right to walk on Mars, and is against its rape and ruination. Mars must become a UN protectorate, and be treated as a “planet for science’, much as the Antarctic has been preserved—at least to a great extent—as unspoilt white wilderness. We are for a WHITE MARS!

Mars should remain as a kind of Ayers Rock in the sky. It must be made visitable to ordinary men and women (the travel costs to be met by community service at home). Its solitudes will be preserved for silence and meditation and honeymooning. From Mars, traditionally the God of War, a myth of peace will spread back to Earth, supplanting the myth of energy/power/exploitation that has so darkened the twentieth century.

APIUM believes that great good will come to both planets if we have the courage to sustain a WHITE MARS.

Brian W. Aldiss, President, APIUM

Pamphlet distributed January 1997

Green College, Oxford, England