White Mars - Hardcover

Aldiss, Brian W.; Penrose, Roger

2.74

128 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312254733 ISBN 13: 9780312254735

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2000

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A 21st-Century Utopia

Two of England's most distinguished thinkers have created a bold and startling vision of a new society escaping the ashes of the old.

In the not-so-distant future, Man will have begun to colonize our planetary neighbor, Mars. Entrenched corporate and national interests have footed the bill, but a few visionary people attempt to keep Mars free of the hidebound ideologies that have plagued the Earth and turned it into a polluted wasteland of war and hunger.

The colony has barely begun to take root in the Martian soil when all communication with EUPACUS--as the industrialized nations of Earth are known--is cut off completely. Environmental and economic stresses have finally spun out of control, and civilization as we know it has collapsed. With no hope of escape or support from Earth, the Martians must overcome the dire obstacles that face them and forge a new alliance for survival.

Led by the brave Tom Jefferies, the colonists struggle to build a new way of living based on the search for knowledge, the improvement of human conditions, and the elimination of the hatreds and delusions that lead to misery in the past.

Included in an appendix is the complete text of the Charter for an Independent Mars, written by Dr. Laurence Lustgarten, a renowned expert on international law.

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Review:

White Mars is, as its title implies, Brian Aldiss's considered reply to the novels Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, in which Kim Stanley Robinson portrayed the terraforming of our neighbor planet and the creation of a utopian society there. Aldiss disapproves of the whole idea of meddling with another world in the first place, and, more genially, of the melodrama surrounding the creation of Robinson's utopia. Where Robinson's Martians get their chance after near-genocidal warfare on Mars and environmental disaster on Earth, Aldiss's get theirs as the result of a corruption- and scandal-fuelled recession in which supplies for the Martian colony are cut. This is, unusually for the shrewd and sometimes cynical Aldiss, a novel with a hero--Tom Jeffreys, the Thomas Jefferson of this Martian revolution:

His manner was less severe than well controlled. He showed great determination for the cause in which he believed, yet softened it with humour, which sprang from an innate modesty. He was not above self-mockery. In his speech he adopted the manner of a plain man, yet what he said was often unexpected.

This is a very English, very urbane book, in which there is an awful lot of talk--about utopia, about consciousness, about subatomic particles; Aldiss collaborated on parts of the book with mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose. It is a wise book and a knowledgeable one. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Brian Aldiss is the author of many novels and works of literary criticism. His history of science fiction, The Trillion Year Spree, has been widely influential. One of the true grandmasters of British SF, he has won numerous awards for his science fiction. He was most recently awarded the Prix Utopia at Futuroscope in France. His recent work includes his memoir, The Twinkling of an Eye.

Sir Roger Penrose is one of the most honored mathematical physicists working today. He is best known for his ground-breaking work with Stephen Hawking in understanding the nature of Black Holes. He has been awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize, and was for many years the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. A bold and provocative lecturer and writer, his ideas have frequently stirred up controversy, most notably in the bestselling book The Emperor's New Mind.

Both authors live in Oxford, England.

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