A Survey of Mars Terraforming in Speculative Fiction
Eric M. Choi
Assistant for Outreach
Mars Society, National Capital Area Chapter
Washington DC
emc528@hotmail.com
Terraforming is the process of transforming the present climate of Mars into a more Earth-like environment for the future human settlement of the planet. Although implementing such a project appears infeasible in the near-term, writers of speculative fiction (SF) have envisioned what it might be like since the beginning of the 20th Century. One of the first portrayals of terraforming was in the 1917 novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote of an Òatmosphere factoryÓ that made the arid world he called Barsoom habitable. From the post-World War II period to the present day, terraforming continues to be a popular topic in SF. This paper will survey some of the major works of terraforming fiction, including The Sands of Mars (1952) by Arthur C. Clarke, Man Plus (1976) and Mars Plus (1994) by Frederik Pohl, Moving Mars (1993) by Greg Bear, Mining the Oort (1992) by Frederik Pohl, the Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars (1993-96) trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, and White Mars (2000) by Brian Aldiss.