The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson
The phone rings, carrying to him in electrons flying through complicated continuous pathways of metal the digitalized voice of his beloved, re-created in his ear by the vibration of small cones of reinforced cardboard.
“Oh hi babe.”
“Hi.” A quick exchange of information and endearments, ending with, “Remember to put the potatoes in the oven.”
“Oh okay. What temperature again?”
“About three-seventy-five.”
“That's Fahrenheit?”
“Yes.”
“Hey that reminds me, I had an epiphany when I was changing Tim's diaper!”
“Did you. What was it?”
“Um—uh-oh. I forget.”
“Good. But don't forget the potatoes.”
“I won't.”
“I love you.”
“And I love you.”
When the printer finishes the stack of paper is waist-high. “Three! Three! Three!” says Tim.
“Many threes,” he agrees, feeling some alarm at the length of the thing, as well as guilt for the trees chopped down to publish it; but doubt is the peripheral vision of courage's foresight. “A genuine bug crusher all right.”
Tim tries to help by pulling out pages and eating them.
“No, wait. Continuity is already abused enough in this, stop that.”
“No.”
He boxes the typescript in three boxes, fending off the ravenous child. “Here have a cookie.”
He gives Tim cookies while addressing and stamping the boxes, exhibiting that ambidextrous bilateral competence so characteristic of contemporary American parents—all boasting hypertrophic corpus callosums, no doubt, could one but see them. “All right, let's walk these down to the mailbox, if we hurry we'll get there before pickup time. I'll have to carry them so you get in the baby backpack, okay?”
“No.”
“In the big-boy backpack then. Yes.”
Ten minutes of ingenious wrestling gets Tim into the baby backpack and onto his back, a victory on points only as his lip is split and he is now vulnerable to ear boxing.
“Ow stop that.”
“No.”
Now a squat to pick up the three boxes, and his ears are grabbed rather than boxed as Tim tries to stay in the backpack. A mighty jerk and lift and he is standing, toddler counterbalancing the weight of the boxes cradled against his chest.
“Oof! This would be sixty-two percent easier on Mars! Here, let's see if we can walk. No problem. Oh the door isn't open. Hmm. Here, can you open it Tim? Just twist the knob? Please? Here I'll bend over just a bit more . . . oops. Never mind, I can do it now. Here, let me do it. Let me.”
“No.”
“Okay, we're up again. We're off. Oh—what about the potatoes in the oven! Will we remember that when we get back?”
“No.”
“Yes we will. Tell you what, I'll leave the door open and when we see it we'll say, 'Oh yeah, door open, put potatoes in oven.' Off we go.”
Into the street. Winding village lane, flanked by flowers and trees. Terraforming at its finest: flat desert valley, now blooming with plants from all over the planet. All overlooked in the long march to the postbox carrying forty kilos of paper and a writhing toddler.
“Ah. Oh. Ow.”
Sweating, trembling, he reaches the postbox and rests his load on top.
“We made it. We're here at last. Can you believe it?”
“No.”
The typescript boxes are almost too big to fit through the slot. Push them in. A nearby stick will serve well. Beat them through one by one.
“You should have eaten a few more pages. I know just which ones I should have given you.”
“No.”
Last one through. Mission accomplished.
He stands there for a moment, sweat overwhelming the evolutionary purpose of his eyebrows and stinging even his spirit's vision. “Let's go home.”
“No.”
They start back down the lane. The sun is setting at the end of the street, and the clouds in the western sky have turned gold, orange, bronze, violaceous, burgundy, pewter, and a touch of chartreuse. Walk on my friends walk on: Even if posterity laughs at the silly boxed lives we lead in the late twentieth century, even if we deserve to be laughed at, which we do, there are still these moments of freedom we give ourselves, walking down a lane at sunset with a child babbling on one's back. “Oops, we left the door open.” Like a Zen master his boy whacks him on the side of the head, and at that moment he experiences an enlightenment or satori: The planet wheels underfoot. The signifier signifies a great significance. And the potatoes are to go in the oven. Happiness makes him light on his feet, very light, so light that he is almost floating, so light that if you tried to quantify this quality, if you could put him on the scale of human feeling and weigh him, his weight (in Terran kilograms) would clock in at exactly 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197 . . .
About the Author
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is the author of the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning Mars trilogy— Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, as well as Antarctica, The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge, A Short, Sharp Shock, and other novels. He lives in Davis, California.
Bantam Books by Kim Stanley Robinson
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
A Short, Sharp Shock
Antarctica
The Martians
Praise for the Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson
The Martians
"Robinson imagines a comfortably habitable Mars supplied with a breathable atmosphere and blue seas, home to descendants of the human colonizers for whom the heroic events chronicled in the trilogy are already the stuff of history books and rapidly germinating legends."
—The New York Times
"Robinson uses a variety of narrative styles to reflect the broad scope of human drama that surrounds the taming of a new and dangerous world."
—Library Journal
"The sf collection of the year to date . . . a perfect smorgasbord of a collection, united by the outstanding feats of world building and characterization."
—Booklist
"A series of disquieting meditations on 'terraforming' and other themes that informed Robinson's landmark trilogy."
—The New York Times Book Review
"If one wanted to prove the cliché 'men are from Mars,' writer Kim Stanley Robinson would be the perfect example. He has already earned a reputation as a Mars man with his trilogy on the red planet. And his obsession with Earth's planetary neighbor persists in his new book, The Martians."
—The Washington Times
"A frontier story of sorts, but one where the characters bring with them their Earth history. The Martians describes each colonist's strengths and spiritual struggles as they transform the planet into home."
—The Idaho Statesman
"The perfect companion to Mr. Robinson's Mars trilogy."
—The Dallas Morning News
Antarctica
"Robinson has succeeded not only in drawing human characters but also in bringing Antarctica to life. Whatever happens in the outer world, Antarctica—both the book and the continent—will become part of the reader's interior landscape."
—The Washington Post Book World
"If I had to choose one writer whose work will set the standard for science fiction in the future, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Forbidding yet fascinating, like the continent it describes
. . .Echoes Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air."
—People
Red Mars
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
"An absorbing novel . . . a scientifically informed imagination of rare ambition at work."
—The New York Times Book Review
Green Mars
WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
"Dense as a diamond and as sharp; it makes even most g
—The Washington Post Book World
Blue Mars
WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
"A complex and deeply engaging dramatization of humanity's future . . . Exhilarating."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAD BEEN OMITTED.
THE MARTIANS
A Bantam Spectra Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Spectra hardcover edition published September 1999
Bantam Spectra paperback edition / October 2000
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
"Exploring Fossil Canyon” was previously published in Universe 12, edited by Terry Law, copyright © 1982 by Terry Carr. “Green Mars” was previously published in Asimov's Magazine, copyright © 1985 by Asimov's Magazine.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
"Discovering Life” copyright © 2000 by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-13115.
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Kim Stanley Robinson, The Martians