An Interplanetary Transplantation, Or, Reloading the Anthropocene on the Red Planet. Issue 3 (3rd July 2021) - Calanchi, Alessandra
ABSTRACT: Mars colonisation started much earlier than one might think. Like any other human colonisation of the past, it began in the field of imagination. Nevertheless, this colonisation is happening now in the real world, and differently from the past it has a worldwide mass media coverage. Of course, the risk of repeating the same errors of the past does exist – this is what I mean by Anthropocene reloaded. While our planet is being destroyed by environmental crises, overpopulation, and natural catastrophes enhanced by human intervention, we plan to terraform Mars, to extract mineral and gas resources, and ultimately to create human settlements, with no guarantees that today's investors and tomorrow's settlers will show more respect to the environment than we have granted our own home-planet so far. I intend to analyse this issue by comparing reality and imagination, also referring to a group of fin-de-siècle utopias which were informed by a very different vision of planet Mars in comparison with later SF fiction.