‘All energy is borrowed’ – terraforming: a master motif for physical and cultural re(up)cycling in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy

Abstract

This article examines the motif of composting in Kim Stanley Robinson’s landmark Mars trilogy, a narrative of the colonisation and terraforming of Mars. It brings to bear Thierry Bardini’s notions of bootstrapping and ‘junk’ and Jed Rasula’s notions of ‘wreading’ and the compost library to analyse the significance of compost and soil in characterisations of terraforming. This article demonstrates the fruitful correspondences between these two theoretical approaches and underlies their close fit with Damien Broderick’s notion of the science fictional megatext. Thinking about literary texts and the terraforming narrative in terms of compost or junk, this article demonstrates how these themes are linked to the fundamental utopian drive that underlies the desire to terraform other planets and to remake social worlds.