Rewriting Earth History on Mars

Several people have identified the relationships between this week’s readings/media and personal memory, highlighted in Total Recall. What struck me was the repetition of themes of ‘civilizational’ and social memory – and the rewriting thereof. In Total Recall and “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” there are major issues of personal memory. Gallinger breaks his account of the salvation of Mars to describe memories of his father from his youth, which are of obvious personal significance. His memories of his father, who encouraged him to become a missionary, interact with what seems his destiny as he realizes himself as the Martian’s Sacred Scoffer. Doug Quaid exists in the quandary between reality and dream state, unable to certify that his memories are his own once the possibility of memory erasure is introduced. There exists an additional layer of historical memory which, through the colonization of mars, is rewritten.

In “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” we are introduced to a dying civilization, which has transitioned into a state of resignation because of the infertility of its males and the writings of its great historian/poet, Locar. The story itself appears an appropriation of something biblical. A desert people, living in the shadow of former opulence (Gallinger finds “Byzantine brilliance” beyond the antechamber as he begins his historical and linguistic study), its buildings likened to tents with walls decorated with animal skins. They have experienced drought and plague, and are now waiting for their savior in the form of a spiritual dissenter. Even their literature paints their very existence as a kind of disease of the inorganic. The idea of dissent, of critical thought, is what saves them (though, paradoxically, this process of questioning scripture is written into the prophecy to be questioned).

In a way this echoes the development of the United States which, perhaps for Zelazny, is successful because of its rejection of uncritical thought, and its insistence on reasoned dissent against governmental or theological convention. This intervention into the decline of Mars at the hands of blind acceptance is then a kind of revision of Western history as it descended into the dark ages of scientific stagnancy, blind faith, etc. Zelazny is providing us with a revised Jesus, sent ‘down’ from Earth, in the heavens, to Mars for its salvation. Through Gallinger we can rescue ourselves from our own past.

The conflation of time into a kind of past present is furthered as Zelazny describes the Martians as having “science, but little technology,” without providing justification for this failure to leap from one to the other, as if there could exist a type of curiosity which does not then imply manipulation of the natural world by means of knowledge gained. They are a civilization which has “done all things…seen all things…heard and felt all things,” as if valuing experience over development, as if unable to conceptualize the creation of “new experience” until Gallinger brings one to them himself.

The portrait given of Martians resembles an earlier terrestrial time point, which the entry of modern humans as prophets by virtue of their own experienced past. In Total Recall, there is a more direct relationship between the situation of the Martians, who derive from terrestrial humans, and those enslaved populations of recent memory. Here we rewrite our own history by freeing Martians from slavery summarily by eliminating the scarcity of the instrument of their slavery (air/oxygen). Here again we are give an opportunity to rewrite the history of global slavery by liberating the population of this new planet.

See You at the Party, Richter

http://webscript.princeton.edu/~phjin/blog/see-you-at-the-party-richter/

ENG 396 Week 2: Mars

On moral hazard, microhistory, censorship, magic, and humor.

Whether it is Richter playing shoot-em-up on Mars, Gallinger nourishing his linguistic genius, Welles delivering the daily news, or Cantril contributing to the propaganda effort, literary moral hazard begs a subtle question: how does one define morality in a literary work? This is not exactly Professor Mitchell’s question in ENG 415, of what “role that moral education should play in literary study.” (1) Rather, Richter mercilessly embraces collateral damage, Quaid instinctively shields himself with a civilian, and Benny responds to the carnage with only a sardonic “welcome to Mars,” each of them possibly implying an anomic moral condition in the social background. Freedman describes the attitude of the modern audience with Walter Benjamin’s telling term, “self-alienation” (p. 545). Is such self-alienation replicated in works like Total Recall? Perhaps the film allows an interpretation as social introspection (as Mars often is), because I found the film magically incapable of suspending my disbelief, a feature shared by its literary progenitor. The problem of detailed moral hazard is also very prominent in the film, whose (meta-)narrative seems to actively encourage Quaid’s systematic employ of violence among innocent people who are effectively duffel meat bags. (Or, nobody is innocent…)

In his microhistorical account of Welles’ broadcast, Orr highlights two real moral hazards: Welles’ failure to predict mass hysteria, and social researchers’ conflicting interests between quantitative analysis and propagandistic application. Surprisingly, the second instance features academic censorship in the names of Princeton and Rockefeller (p. 60)—a delicate topic for Orr’s academic work—but the first instance, about the “contagions of suggestion” (p. 45), suggests a juxtaposition between War of the Worlds’ literary hysteria and real hysteria. Hiding behind this interesting connection is a tangle between the magical beliefs of the highly moved listeners (Orr p. 64–65), the “ ‘magic’ power of symbols and words” (Orr p. 69), and the plausible realism of War of the Worlds.

Figure 1: A tangle of ideas from War of the Worlds.

I hope I’m not the only one who sees a little humor in the panicked reaction to a piece of radio fiction, although there is nothing humorous per se in War. The obvious contrast is with Total Recall, in which Ahnold’s timely one-liners spruce up an otherwise violent and ethically unsophisticated film. “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” works differently by implanting humor into the narrative. Gallinger’s smugness is matched most ironically by M’Cwyie’s patronizing in response to his quick progress (p. 63). As Rhiannon discerned, the role of “otherness” is at once ameliorative and divisive (2), yet Gallinger and M’Cwyie’s common, humorous intent divides at the personal level while bridging the culture gap. Gallinger commits moral hazard through his prophetic status by impregnating Braxa without appreciating the Martian teleology of doom. The sex with Braxa is also a fulcrum for Gallinger’s attitude; up until the act, he emitted smartass and condescension (p. 78–79), while immediately afterward, he uncharacteristically describes his sense of “shame” (p. 83). One may further ask how humor depends on morality.

As reflective narratives, the Martian stories take on censorship in contrasting ways; consider authoritarianism in Total Recall and blasphemy in “A Rose for Ecclesiastes.” There is no moral ambiguity about Cohaagen’s self-serving censorship of the rebel cause, whereas Gallinger the “Sacred Scoffer” advanced blasphemy without denying the moral righteousness of dogma (p. 99). It is another instance of moral hazard, where Gallinger, foreign to the Martian religion and mocking his own species’ Biblical passage (p. 98), betrays the theologically determined morality for his personal belief system.

I do not feign to know how to properly answer, “What is morality in a literary work?” But the above examples of Martian science fiction suggests that literary morality at once reflects and criticizes real moral standards, while also experimenting with morality, even that which leads characters to commit unbelievable moral hazards. Morality, like psychology, is another surface for science fiction to work on.

References: Roger Zelany “A Rose for Eclesiastes,” Philip K. Dick “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” Carl Freedman “Polemical Afterword,” Jackie Orr “The Martian in the Machine,” Total Recall (1990), and War of the Worlds (1938).

No New Thing Under the Sun

keywords: the colonizing "superman," prophecy and agency, familiarity and distance, daddy issues

In Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" the main character Gallinger is shuttled between issues of familiarity and distance from his own life and experience. Gallinger blurs the line between human and inhuman as he seems so set apart from his fellow humans. Gallinger embodies the notion of a superhuman colonizer in the vein of characters such as Jake Sally in Avatar who come to embody the adopted culture to such an extent that they are more in touch with it than those who belong to it. He is able to grasp the Martian high language quickly and has no lack for faith in his own abilities. To all appearances this appears a textbook example of racial superiority couched in the language of science fiction and other cultures.

However, Gallinger is a mere catspaw in the hands of forces that both are and are not in his control. His own confidence in his abilities and his reference to being a prophet by the Martian people proves to be preordained; his actions are not of his own choosing. Everything he does is in keeping with the teachings of Locar, in keeping with Ecclesiastes. "There is nothing new under the sun."

First off, Gallinger has a severe issue with his own agency- with taking credit for his actions and elevating himself above others. As seen in his self-congratulating justification for why others react to his hubris poorly, "That's the reason everyone's jealous-- why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else" (59). That sort of humility really inspires confidence in his ability to be a diplomat to an alien race.

Gallinger's issue with agency is related to his relationship with his father and his religion. The conflict underlying his relationship with his father and his relationship with religions as well as his place in them is based on this sense of familiarity and distance. On witnessing his father's body at the wake Gallinger describes how he "looked at him and did not recognize him" (65). Gallinger's removal from his father- his own family- points to his own issues regarding his position in relation to others. Gallinger is as alien to the rest of the humans as the Martians are to them.

He recalls his father as a "stranger" who "had never been cruel- stern, demanding with contempt for everyone's shortcomings- but never cruel" (65). This sounds oddly similar to how others see Gallinger, albeit with a slightly more jocular bent, nonetheless he tends to inspire a similar reaction of distance from others.

Gallinger keeps quoting the Book of Ecclesiastes without explicitly copping to the fact that he has fallen prey to the sins as well. Namely, Gallinger falls pray to the sin of vanity. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man... [of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?... The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun]" (67).

What Gallinger likely thinks he's doing.

He believes himself capable of changing a whole society, of saving it from a fatalistic bent. Instead Gallinger tries to convince the Martian into letting these outsiders impregnate the Martian females, displacing the men in the society while making a suggestion towards further investigating the source of their infertility. This is not in keeping with a diplomatic or civil meeting. Gallinger interrupts a major religious ceremony to call the Martians out on their perceived stupidity and refusal to take action of any sort.

Through his actions he says the Martians are taking their own inability to procreate, to actively contribute to society, as a greater sacrifice of their own agency. Gallinger presumes to return this ability to procreate by seizing the agency on his own, yet the Martians knew this would come to be. Gallinger was a cog in a machine of prophecy and preordainment that he refuted and in so doing affirmed. Locar proved to be the better prophet than he as Gallinger comes by no profit from his hubris or his actions to save their race in spite of their inaction.

Gallinger is so broken by his experience with Braxa, at the utter fatalistic inescapable nature of prophecy that he tries to kill himself by the story's end. As he returns to the shuttle he recounts in his narration that he is "leaving the burden of life so many footsteps behind me... I went to my cabin, locked the door, and took forty-four sleeping pills" (100). Gallinger is used just as he tried to use the Martian people when he first arrived to fuel his career and ego.

Versus what he actually is to the Martians.

Mars, Martians, and Setting

Warning: This post may be slightly edited over the course of Wednesday; I have a multitude of Wednesday classes and so am posting this now for the benefit of those doing a presentation on Thursday

Mars, Life, Civilization, Ruins, Desert. In essence, these terms are all synonymous with Science Fiction depictions of Mars. I personally am fascinated by the setting and background that Science Fiction writers incorporate into their stories and thus focus on the depictions of the Red Planet rather than on the actions taken upon it. Regardless, for stories concerning Mars, its appearance and setting are critical for the plot. With a clearly visible (from both Earth-based observatories and various robotic expeditions) rocky surface, the planet is both easy to describe for SciFi authors and scarily similar to various Earth locations. Moving into the realm of fiction, another trope is that Mars is the home of alien life or the ruins they left behind after extinction.

"The Ruins of a Martian 'Port'" as claimed by non-scientific sources

Mars has quite a pedigree when it comes to Science Fiction. Arguably most famously, it was the home planet of the extraterrestrials in H. G. Wells War of the Worlds. More broadly, the assumption of technologically or magically advanced Martians living in a more Earth-like climate is a hallmark of earlier Science Fiction works (see C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, etc...). More often than not, the Earth was under attack by the planet's denizens, thus forming the oft-repeated scenario of "Mars Attacks!"

Unlike War of the Worlds though, modern interpretations (clearly affected by more recent NASA expeditions to the planet) see Mars as the site of alien ruins surrounded by desert rather than the home of a thriving civilization. In the video game Mass Effect, Mars is where humans discover ruins from an ancient alien empire. These "Protheans" had established a Martian outpost to observe humanity and once they disappeared from the galaxy, their technology allowed humans spread beyond the Solar System. In a parallel manner, Total Recall centers around the discovery (and the subsequent battles over the activation) of an ancient alien artifact that could terraform Mars into a habitable Eden. As a result, Total Recall is something of a bridge between the two stereotypes in that Mars was once a paradise, but fell into desertified ruin. In both cases, despite the vastly superior technology of the respective alien race, all that remains on Mars are ruins and artifacts. Regardless, the existence of life on Mars (either past or present) is never deeply questioned and appears to be assumed in most Science Fiction works.

Do we find him or simply ruins?

A Rose for Ecclesiastes provides a classic example of just such a series of beliefs. In that story, the protagonist is brought to the Red Planet to help interact with and learn from the native Martians. These Martians are faced with the immanent collapse of their civilization due to male sterility. While Gallinger's actions are somewhat independent of the setting, his musings are not. Many times he discusses the state of disrepair of the (believed last) Martian city known as Tirellian, thus providing convenient and potent imagery of a civilization falling to ruin. Moving beyond the idea of Martian ruins, the only thing Gallinger describes besides the Martians and their civilization is the unimaginably expansive desert with its biting red sand. The desert also serves as a sort of metaphor for the Martian collapse as a sufficiently capable alien race would be able to at least partially tame the desert (as humans have for centuries). Additionally, there is a certain mythos surrounding great riches lost in a literal or metaphorical sea (ex: Iram of the Pillars, lost in a sea of sand; the city of Atlantis) that allows Roger Zelazny to draw a parallel between the fading Martian civilization and tragic loss of these historical human cities. In both cases though, the planet's surface is harsh and often serves either as plot context or a symbol of the collapse of the assumed alien civilization discussed previously.

In conclusion, Mars is fascinating as a setpiece because despite the variety inherent in Science Fiction, the planet is always portrayed in one of two polar-opposite manners. Either the planet is a lush Eden (or at least sufficiently Earth-like to support technologically advanced life) populated by Martians or it is a barren red desert populated by alien ruins. Nevertheless, the fact that Mars is the subject of a pair of popular Science Fiction tropes has failed to dissuade human fascination with the planet and I expect that Mars will remain a critical element if Science Fiction for the foreseeable future.