(Review by Nick Gevers, Ph.D., Cape Town, South Africa)

After his extraordinary Mars Trilogy, Robinson has returned to Earth with Antarctica (1997). But his argument has not changed. In the Mars novels, Robinson – who has a strong claim to the title of most significant contemporary SF writer – expatiated in exhaustive and brilliant detail on the mechanics of a reformed, sympathetic, unabstract, untotalitarian utopia. Mars will remake us as we remake it, his manifesto ran: if we live for our ecology, and for each other, and for the hard work we do together in that ecology, we shall be happy and free, and capitalism shall be no more. This is to simplify 1600 densely-argued pages rather drastically, but the idea was clear: Mars was brave new Anarres, and Earth bad old Urras (to borrow the very similar two-world division in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed). Robinson’s Martians created an anarcho-syndicalist utopia, one bold, complex, and very human. But what may subsequently have preyed on Robinson’s mind was the feeling that his urgent prescriptions for change had too remote a context: Mars is too far away, too far in the future, too insulated from Earth’s economic and demographic realities, to be a useful model for present action. Whatever his thinking, Robinson visited Antarctica in person, and made of it a more immediate ecotopian territory than Mars could ever be.

Antarctica is set in the near future; how near is left deliberately very hazy, so that Robinson can mix together contemporary Antarctic situations and more speculative possibilities. As usual, Robinson foregrounds from the start his relentlessly active and thoughtful characters: a tall Amazon who works as a tour guide and lives for the wilds; an even taller and discontentedly menial romantic with interesting socio-political theories; and the alert and personable roving representative of an activist US Senator. Like most Robinsonians, these individuals are passionately engaged with their surroundings and each other; the growth of their utopian consciousness is a mirror of their emotional and geographical wanderings and discoveries. Through their eyes we see the rich possibilities of life in the scientific stations, on the ice shelves, and in clandestine utopian communities. The history and spirit of Antarctica are additionally relayed to us in the commentaries of a peripatetic feng shui master. When eco-terrorists sabotage many facilities and temporarily isolate Antarctica from the North, all of the characters’ rapidly developing thinking can be applied to the drafting of a new treaty document for the continent, one free from official dictation. Ecological responsibility, utopian inhabitation of the wilderness, opportunities in Antarctica for the Third World: all can be accommodated. Utopian Mars has come home to Earth, or at least to a part of it.

Reservations can be expressed. Antarctica often seems to strive too hard for practicality and moderation, so that its utopian vistas are cramped; and for all their lucidity, it is difficult to see these utopian proposals being applied to the other continents, where billions dwell, and pressures are far greater. Like Mars, Antarctica is insulated from Malthusian laws, and its utopias can seem facile. But the effort is eloquently made, and Robinson is almost home again, back from Mars to Pacific Edge (1990).

HARPER COLLINS/VOYAGER (UK). 1997. HARDCOVER.

Explorations will be updated regularly.