Analysis on red mars

UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO

Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas

Departamento de Letras Modernas

Discipline: FLM0576 - Tópicos do Romance (morning) The 2nd Semester of 2006
Professors: Dr. Maria Elisa Burgos Cevasco & Dr. Marcos César de Paula Soares
Student: Ricardo Tavares Eraldo – USP n.: 3782951
Date: February 14, 2007

Final Assignment: Analysis on the novel Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also is the midst of the garden, and the trees of knowledge of good and evil. […]” Genesis 2 As this paper is aimed at analyzing through the Utopian perspectives the science fiction novel entitled Red Mars (1993), by the American writer Kim Stanley Robinson, some relevant parallelisms (whenever possible) will be used with other three novels of other authors, as the following: Ubik (1969), The Dispossessed (1974) and Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). Briefly exposing, issues such as imagination and fancy in the post-modernist literary works from the USA are, thereby, the main discussion to be brought up here, which has as the theme the dichotomies of two worlds, our Earth and any other planet.

Red Mars, our chief focus, is a very long description regarding the building of a new world on Mars. This wonderful “prowess” is developed by “The First Hundred” – one hundred scientists from several areas of knowledge – whose main reciprocal goal is to create both a worldwide nation and its respective society which will value new customs which differ too much from the ones practiced by the peoples on Earth so far.

The Dispossessed, by the renowned