BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson

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JANUARY 2015

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COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY: ANINTERVIEW WITH KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

[Image: The face of Nicholson Crater, Mars, courtesy of the ESA ].

According to The New York T imes B ook R eview , the novels of Nebula and

Hugo Award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson "constitute one of the most

impressive bodies of work in modern science fiction." I might argue, however,

that Robinson is fundamentally a landscape writer.

That is, Robinson's books are not only filled with descriptions of landscapes –

whole planets, in fact, noted, sensed, and textured down to the chemistry of their

soils and the currents in their seas – but they are often about nothing other than

vast landscape processes, in the midst of which a few humans stumble along.

"Politics," in these novels, is as much a question of social justice as it is shorthand

for learning to live in specific environments.

In his most recent trilogy – Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below , and Sixty

Days and Counting – we see the earth becoming radically unlike itself throughclimate change. Floods drown the U.S. capital; fierce winter ice storms leave

suburban families powerless, in every sense of the word; and the glaciers of

concrete and glass that we have mistaken for civilization begin to reveal their

inner weaknesses.

The stand-alone novel Antarctica documents the cuts, bruises, and theoretical

breakthroughs of environmental researchers as they hike, snowshoe, sledge,

belay, and fly via helicopter over the fractured canyons and crevasses of the

southern continent. They wander across "shear zones" and find rooms buried in

the ice, natural caves linked together like a "shattered cathedral, made of titanic

columns of driftglass."

Meanwhile, in Robinson's legendary Mars Trilogy – Red Mars , Blue Mars , and

Green Mars – the bulk of the narrative is, again, complete planetarytransformation, this time on Mars. The Red Planet, colonized by scientists, is

deliberately remade – or terraformed – to be climatically, hydrologically, and

agriculturally suited for human life. Yet this is a different kind of human life – it,

too, has been transformed: politically and psychologically.

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SEPTEMBER 2014

Collapse

The Underground Wind Bulbsof Utah

Untitled Landscapes

Empty Landscapes of InvisibleDangers

Procedural Forestry

Celestial Chiaroscuro

Implied Landscapes

Procedural Brutalism

Shapegarden

Demolition School

AUGUST 2014

Through the Cracks BetweenStars

Weather is the Future of UrbanDesign

Powers of Quarantine

The Great Age of CloudsMinecraft

The Fall

Survey Says

Emergency Exit

Military Cave Logistics

The Future T.B.D.

Buy a Fort

Right to Light

Seismic Suburb

Cultivating the Map

The Comet as Landscape Art

Silver Village

Worshipping the CrashThe Spacecraft Cemetery

JULY 2014

NATO's Underground RomanSuper-Quarry

Landmarks of the ChineseCryosphere

The Most Indoors

Beneath the Forest, Buildings

Bunker Simulations

The Museum At The Bottom OfThe Sea

Life on the Subsurface: AnInterview with PenelopeBoston

Architecture-by-Bee and OtherAnimal Printheads

Circular

Buy a Lighthouse

Road Trips, Routes, andLandscape Instrumentation

Go Fish

X

Buffer Space

JUNE 2014

The Snow Mine

In his recent book Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and

Other Science Fictions , Fredric Jameson devotes an entire chapter to Robinson's

Mars Trilogy. Jameson writes that "utopia as a form is not the representation of

radical alternatives; it is rather simply the imperative to imagine them."

Across all his books, Robinson is never afraid to imagine these radical

alternatives. Indeed, in the interview posted below he explains that "I’ve been

working all my career to try to redefine utopia in more positive terms – in more

dynamic terms."

In the following interview, then, Kim Stanley Robinson talks to BLDGBLOGabout climate change, from Hurricane Katrina to J.G. Ballard; about the

influence of Greek island villages on his descriptions of Martian base camps;

about life as a 21st century primate in the 24/7 "techno-surround"; how we must

rethink utopia as we approach an age without oil; whether "sustainability" is

really the proper thing to be striving for; and what a future archaeology of the

space age might find.

This interview also includes previously unpublished photos by Robinson

himself, taken in Greece and Antarctica.

• • •

BLDGBLOG: I’m interested in the possibility that literary genres might have tobe redefined in light of climate change. In other words, a novel where two feet of

snow falls on Los Angeles, or sand dunes creep through the suburbs of Rome,

would be considered a work of science fiction, even surrealism, today; but that

same book, in fifty years’ time, could very well be a work of climate realism, so to

speak. So if climate change is making the world surreal , then what it means to

write a “realistic” novel will have to change. As a science fiction novelist, does

that affect how you approach your work?

Kim Stanley Robinson: Well, I’ve been saying this for a number of years: that

now we’re all living in a science fiction novel together, a book that we co-write. A

lot of what we’re experiencing now is unsurprising because we’ve been preppedfor it by science fiction. But I don’t think surrealism is the right way to put it.

Surrealism is so often a matter of dreamscapes, of things becoming more than

real – and, as a result, more sublime. You think, maybe, of J.G. Ballard’s The

Drowned World , and the way that he sees these giant catastrophes as a release

from our current social set-up: catastrophe and disaster are aestheticized and

looked at as a miraculous salvation from our present reality. But it wouldn’t

really be like that.

I started writing about Earth’s climate change in the Mars books. I needed

something to happen on Earth that was shocking enough to allow a kind of

historical gap in which my Martians could realistically establish independence. I

had already been working with Antarctic scientists who were talking about the

West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and how unstable it might be – so I used that, and in

Blue Mars I showed a flooded London. But after you get past the initial

dislocations and disasters, what you’ve got is another landscape to be inhabited –

another situation that would have its own architecture, its own problems, and its

opinions expressed here are m

own; they do not reflect the

views of my friends, editors,

employers, publishers, or

colleagues, with whom this

blog is not affiliated.

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Urban Giants

Mathematical Equations asArchitectonic Forms

Drive-By Archaeology

London And Its Dead

A Pyramid in the Middle ofNowhere Built to Track theEnd of the World

Where Borders Melt

Perspectival Objects

An Occult History of the

Television SetProprietary Microcosms

Welcome to the World of thePlastic Beach

City of Buried Machines

Guided By Voices

MAY 2014

A Building for MeasuringBorders

100 Views of a Drowning World

The City and its Periphery

Demolition Ground

APRIL 2014

Wire-Tapping the Ruins ofPompeii

Romanticism of the ScanningError

MARCH 2014

When Hills Hide Arches

FEBRUARY 2014

Roentgen Objects, or: DevicesLarger than the Rooms thatContain Them

Forward into the colossalyellow room taking shapebeneath Manhattan

JANUARY 2014

Where The Alps Are A 3D-Printed Landscape MadeFrom Artificial Snow

Kiln

DECEMBER 2013

Conic Sections: An Interviewwith Sol Yurick

own solutions.

To a certain extent, later, in my climate change books, I was following in that

mold with the flood of Washington DC. I wrote that scene before Katrina. After

Katrina hit, my flood didn’t look the same. I think it has to be acknowledged

that the use of catastrophe as a literary device is not actually adequate to talk

about something which, in the real world, is often so much worse – and which

comes down to a great deal of human suffering.

So there may have been surreal images coming out of the New Orleans flood, butthat’s not really what we take away from it.

[Image: Refugees gather outside the Superdome, New O rleans, post-Katrina].

BLDGBLOG: Aestheticizing these sorts of disasters can also have the effect of

making climate change sound like an adventure. In Fifty Degrees Below , for

instance, you wrote: “People are already fond of the flood… It was an adventure.

It got people out of their ruts.” The implication is that people might actually be

excited about climate change. Is there a risk that all these reports about flooded

cities and lost archipelagoes and new coastlines might actually make climate

change sound like some sort of survivalist adventure?

Robinson: It’s a failure of imagination to think that climate change is going to be

an escape from jail – and it’s a failure in a couple of ways.

For one thing, modern civilization, with six billion people on the planet, lives on

the tip of a gigantic complex of prosthetic devices – and all those devices have to

work. The crash scenario that people think of, in this case, as an escape to

freedom would actually be so damaging that it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be

an adventure. It would merely be a struggle for food and security, and a

permanent high risk of being robbed, beaten, or killed; your ability to feelconfident about your own – and your family’s and your children’s – safety

would be gone. People who fail to realize that… I’d say their imaginations

haven’t fully gotten into this scenario.

BLDGBLOG INTERVIEWS

Tales of the Crash: An Interviewith Nick Arvin

Life on the Subsurface: AnInterview with PenelopeBoston

Conic Sections: An Interviewwith Sol Yurick

Spatial Delirium: An Interviewwith Michael Light

Ghosts of Planets Past: AnInterview with Ron Blakey

Captive America: An Interviewwith Alyse Emdur

Sim City: An Interview withStone Librande

Arid Lands: An Interview withRoss de Lipkau

Mountain Lab: An Interview witScott McGuire

They Come From Everywhere:An Interview with Mike

ElizaldePark Service: An Interview with

Vicki Webster

Seismic Signals: An Interviewwith Ken Goldberg

Of Sisters and Clones: AnInterview with Jessica Rath

Invisible Fences: An Interviewwith Dean Anderson

Making Cities Sing: An Interviewith Dennis Scholl

Primary Landscapes: AnInterview with EdwardBurtynsky

Spacesuit: An Interview with

Nicholas de MonchauxAerotropolis: An Interview with

Greg Lindsay

Unsolving the City: An Interviewith China Miéville

Computational Mythologies: AnInterview with Zachary Maso

http://v-e-n-u-e.com/Making-Cities-Sing-An-Interview-with-Dennis-Schollhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/where-alps-are-3d-printed-landscape.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/Park-Service-An-Interview-with-Vicki-Websterhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/perspectival-objects.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/computational-mythologies-interview.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/roentgen-objects-or-device-larger-than.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/spacesuit-interview-with-nicholas-de.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/conic-sections-interview-with-sol-yurick.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/captive-america-interview-with-alyse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/kiln.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/drive-by-archaeology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/mathematical-equations-as-architectonic.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/Seismic-Signals-An-Interview-with-Ken-Goldberghttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/unsolving-city-interview-with-china.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/Of-Sisters-and-Clones-An-Interview-with-Jessica-Rathhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/life-on-subsurface-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/proprietary-microcosms.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/Arid-Lands-An-Interview-with-Ross-de-Lipkauhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-city-swollen-with-dead.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/spatial-delirium-interview-with-michael.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/tales-of-crash-interview-with-nick-arvin.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/urban-giants.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/welcome-to-world-of-plastic-beach.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/they-come-from-everywhere-interview.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/wire-tapping-ruins-of-pompeii.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFifty-Degrees-Below-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553585819&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://v-e-n-u-e.com/Invisible-Fences-An-Interview-with-Dean-Andersonhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-city-and-its-periphery.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/where-borders-melt.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/ghosts-of-planets-past-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/sim-city-interview-with-stone-librande.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/Primary-Landscapes-An-Interview-with-Edward-Burtynskyhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/100-views-of-drowning-world.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/image-metropolitan-transportation.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/aerotropolis-interview-with-greg.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-occult-history-of-television-set.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/demolition-ground.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/conic-sections-interview-with-sol-yurick.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/city-of-buried-machines.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/romanticism-of-scanning-error.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/mountain-lab-interview-with-scott.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-building-for-measuring-borders.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-pyramid-in-middle-of-nowhere-built-to.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/when-hills-hide-arches.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/guided-by-voices.html


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NOVEMBER 2013

Flywheel Landscapes, EnergyReserves, 3D-Printed UrbanCaves, and the BritishExploratory Land Archive

The Drowned

(waves, says hello, disappearsagain)

OCTOBER 2013

Hydrological CeremoniesBeneath the City

Spatial Delirium: An Interviewwith Michael Light

Buying, Selling, and BuildingAi r

SEPTEMBER 2013

Books Received

Ghosts of Planets Past: AnInterview with Ron Blakey

Sukkah City

Almost Nature

Offworld Glaciology

Ride the Lightning

AUGUST 2013

Lightning Farm

Climate Change Archaeology

Combat PreservationOffworld Metallurgy

Tensioned Suspension

Chocolate Mill

Landscape Futures Arrives

Wood Grain Cosmogram

Space Truffle

Voices Loom

Teenage Mutant Ninja District

JULY 2013

Subterranea

Alternative Inputs

The Peterborough Tunnels

JUNE 2013

On the Road Again

MAY 2013Captive America: An Interview

with Alyse Emdur

Ghost War

Ground Sounds

Geomedia

It’s easy to imagine people who are bored in the modern techno-surround, as I

call it, and they’re bored because they have not fully comprehended that they’re

still primates, that their brains grew over a million-year period doing a certain

suite of activities, and those activities are still available. Anyone can do them;

they’re simple. They have to do with basic life support and basic social activities

unboosted by technological means.

And there’s an addictive side to this. People try to do stupid technological

replacements for natural primate actions, but it doesn’t quite give them the buzz

that they hoped it would. Even though it looks quite magical, the sense of accomplishment is not there. So they do it again, hoping that the activity, like a

drug, will somehow satisfy the urge that it’s supposedly meant to satisfy. But it

doesn’t. So they do it more and more – and they fall down a rabbit hole,

pursuing a destructive and high carbon-burn activity, when they could just go

out for a walk, or plant a garden, or sit down at a table with a friend and drink

some coffee and talk for an hour. All of these unboosted, straight-forward

primate activities are actually intensely satisfying to the totality of the mind-body

that we are.

So a little bit of analysis of what we are as primates – how we got here

evolutionarily, and what can satisfy us in this world – would help us to imagineactivities that are much lower impact on the planet and much more satisfying to

the individual at the same time. In general, I’ve been thinking: let’s rate our

technologies for how much they help us as primates , rather than how they can

put us further into this dream of being powerful gods who stalk around on a

planet that doesn’t really matter to us.

Because a lot of these supposed pleasures are really expensive. You pay with your

life. You pay with your health. And they don’t satisfy you anyway! You end up

taking various kinds of prescription or non-prescription drugs to compensate for

your unhappiness and your unhealthiness – and the whole thing comes out of a

kind of spiral: if only you could consume more, you’d be happier. But it isn’t

true.

I’m advocating a kind of alteration of our imagined relationship to the planet. I

think it’d be more fun – and also more sustainable. We’re always thinking that

we’re much more powerful than we are, because we’re boosted by technological

powers that exert a really, really high cost on the environment – a cost that isn’t

calculated and that isn’t put into the price of things. It’s exteriorized from our

fake economy. And it’s very profitable for certain elements in our society for us

to continue to wander around in this dream-state and be upset about everything.

The hope that, “Oh, if only civilization were to collapse, then I could be happy”

– it’s ridiculous. You can simply walk out your front door and get what youwant out of that particular fantasy.

Ruin, Space, and Shadow: AnInterview with Mike Mignola

Counter-What?: An Interviewwith Jeffrey Inaba

Leviathan: An Interview withRichard Mosse

Plants Without Borders: AnInterview with Sara Redston

Until Proven Safe: An Interviewwith Krista Maglen

One Million Years of Isolation:An Interview with AbrahamVan Luik

Isolation or Quarantine: AnInterview with Dr. GeorgesBenjamin

Extraordinary EngineeringControls: An Interview withJonathan Richmond

On the Other Side of Arrival: AnInterview with David Barnes

Biology at the Border: AnInterview with AlisonBashford

The Last Town on Earth: AnInterview with Thomas Mulle

Saddam's Palaces: An Interviewwith Richard Mosse

This Gaming Life: An Interviewwith Jim Rossignol

landscape.mp3: An Interviewwith Smout Allen

Spaces, Repeating: An Interviewith Tom McCarthy

Game/Space: An Interview withDaniel Dociu

Comparative Planetology: AnInterview with Kim StanleyRobinson

Without Walls: An Interviewwith Lebbeus Woods

The Elephants of Rome: AnInterview with Mary Beard(pt. 2)

The Wonders of the World: AnInterview with Mary Beard(pt. 1)

Drains of Canada: An Interviewwith Michael Cook

The possibility of secretpassageways: An Interviewwith Patrick McGrath

Of Cars, Dogs, Golf, and BadFeng Shui : An Interview withJeffrey Inaba

The Heliocentric Pantheon: An

Interview with Walter MurchAgitation, Power, Space: AnInterview with Ole Bouman

Architecture and ClimateChange: An Interview with EMazria

War/Photography: An Interviewwith Simon Norfolk

The Lonely Planet Guide toMicronations: An Interviewwith Simon Sellars

Science Fiction and the City: AnInterview with JeffVanderMeer

The Visionary State: An

Interview with Erik DavisInterview with Mike Davis: Part

2

Interview with Mike Davis: Part1

Design in the World: AnInterview with Detlef Mertin

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/extraordinary-engineering-controls.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/wood-grain-cosmogram.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/sukkah-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/waves-says-hello-disappears-again.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/buying-selling-and-building-air.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/lightning-farm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/captive-america-interview-with-alyse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-peterborough-tunnels.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/almost-nature_5.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/ride-lightning.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/warphotography-interview-with-simon.htmlhttp://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=43677_0_23_0_Mhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/spatial-delirium-interview-with-michael.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/visionary-state-interview-with-erik.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/saddams-palaces-interview-with-richard.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/alternative-inputs.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/science-fiction-and-city-interview.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-radio-bldgblog-interview-with-tom.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/isolation-or-quarantine-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/offworld-glaciology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/voices-loom.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/ground-sounds.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/architecture-and-climate-change.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/plants-without-borders-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/landscapemp3-interview-with-smout-allen.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/possibility-of-secret-passageways.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/ruin-space-and-shadow-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/until-proven-safe-interview-with-krista.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/hydrological-ceremonies-beneath-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/drains-of-canada-interview-with-michael.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/heliocentric-pantheon-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/this-gaming-life-interview-with-jim.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/landscape-futures-arrives.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/chocolate-mill.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/flywheel-landscapes-energy-reserves-3d.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/of-cars-dogs-golf-and-bad-feng-shui.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/combat-preservation.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/offworld-metallurgy.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/teenage-mutant-ninja-district.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/geomedia.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/ghost-war.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/lonely-planet-guide-to-micronations.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/books-received.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/gamespace-interview-with-daniel-dociu.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/space-truffle.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/ghosts-of-planets-past-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/leviathan-interview-with-richard-mosse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/million-years-of-isolation-interview.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/last-town-on-earth-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-was-excited-to-read-that-robert.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/wonders-of-world-interview-with-mary.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-2.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-road-again.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-other-side-of-arrival-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-1.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/counter-what-interview-with-jeffrey.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/without-walls-interview-with-lebbeus.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/tensioned-suspension.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/climate-change-archaeology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/biology-at-border-interview-with-alison.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-drowned.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/agitation-power-space-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/elephants-of-rome-interview-with-mary.html


5/46



In the Box: A Tour Through theSimulated Battlefields of theU.S. National TrainingCenter

Skyfall

Eyeball

The Extinction Orchestra

Then he heard the ice coming

Sim City: An Interview withStone Librande

Littoral New York

Sky CraneDocumentary Holography

On the Rise

Shapes from the Dream Mine

APRIL 2013

Forest Tone

British Countryside Generator

Mountain View

Two-Track Mind

Intentional LandscapesTemple of the Autonomous

Machine

Earth Prism

Mountain Lab: An Interviewwith Scott McGuire

The Planetary Super-Surface ofSan Bernardino County

Arctic Instruments

Bingham Landslide

Foundation

They Come From Everywhere:An Interview with MikeElizalde

Electromagnetic Chiaroscuro

Urban Ecology

Model Landscape

MARCH 2013

Benchmark B

Parallax View

Cool Dam

Rockets to Reefs

Build a Bridge

Meshworm

Landscape Futures

Cross-Species Infrastructure

Branch

London Laocoön

Space in the Adaptive Plastic

FEBRUARY 2013

Starfish City

Ice Age Aerial

Floating Cities and Site Surveys

The Fifth WallOptical Calibration Targets

Fault Wall

Rock Type

Caustic Engineering

Soft Launch

[Image: New Orleans under water, post-Katrina; photographer unknown].

BLDGBLOG: Mars has a long history as a kind of utopian destination – and, in

that, your Mars trilogy is no exception. What is it about Mars that brings out this

particular kind of speculation?

Robinson: Well, it brings up an unusual modern event that can happen in ourmental landscapes, which is comparative planetology . That wasn’t really available

to us before the modern era – really, until Viking.

One thing about Mars is that it’s a radically impoverished landscape. You start

with nothing – the bare rock, the volatile chemicals that are needed for life, some

water, and an empty landscape. That makes it a kind of gigantic metaphor, or

modeling exercise, and it gives you a way to imagine the fundamentals of what

we’re doing here on Earth. I find it is a very good thing to begin thinking that we

are terraforming Earth – because we are, and we’ve been doing it for quite some

time. We’ve been doing it by accident, and mostly by damaging things. In some

ways, there have been improvements, in terms of human support systems, butthere’s still so much damage, damage that’s gone unacknowledged or ignored,

even when all along we knew it was happening. People kind of shrug and think:

a there’s nothing we can do about it, or b maybe the next generation will be

clever enough to figure it out. So on we go.

Interview with David Ulin

Interview with David Maisel

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/starfish-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/electromagnetic-chiaroscuro.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/floating-cities-and-site-surveys.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/foundation.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/benchmark-b.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-box-tour-through-simulated.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-fifth-wall.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/cross-species-infrastructure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/ice-age-aerial.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/urban-ecology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/meshworm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/space-in-adaptive-plastic.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/eyeball.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-planetary-super-surface-of-san.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/from-rockets-to-reefs.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/parallax-view.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/caustic-engineering.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/forest-tone.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/sim-city-interview-with-stone-librande.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/optical-calibration-targets.htmlhttp://www.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s20bldgbloghttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/branch.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/landscape-futures.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/on-rise.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/mountain-view.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/documentary-holography.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/model-landscape.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/bingham-landslide.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/arctic-instruments.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/london-laocoon.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/build-bridge.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/intentional-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/skyfall.htmlhttp://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=35223_0_23_0_Mhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/sky-crane.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/littoral-new-york.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/then-he-heard-ice-coming_11.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/cool-dam.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-extinction-orchestra.htmlhttp://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=37391_0_23_24_Mhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/british-countryside-generator.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/soft-launch.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/temple-of-autonomous-machine.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/fault-wall.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/librarian-of-rocks.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/they-come-from-everywhere-interview.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/mountain-lab-interview-with-scott.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/two-track-mind.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/earth-prism.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/shapes-from-dream-mine.html


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JANUARY 2013

Detecting lost rooms witharchitectural antennae

Spreading Ground

Crashing Through Dark MatterWalls

Operation Deep Sleep: or,

dormant robots at thebottom of the sea

Desert Traverse

San Andreas: Architecture forthe Fault

Test Room

Fence Phone

Project Sanguine and the DeadHand

Electromagnetic Escher mazesmade of gold

Antarctic Island Radio

DECEMBER 2012

Tree Receivers

Books Received

Sound Signature

Not a Grid, but a Fleet

Model Warfare

Monuments of Misdirection

Pop-Up Forests andExperimental ChristmasTrees

Back-Up Tut and Other DecoySpatial Antiquities

Foodprint L.A.

NOVEMBER 2012

Electromagnetic Test Town

Drawing Building Hearing

The Cell and the Pyramid

Mehrangarh Fort

Hydro-Monuments of Rajasthan

Chand Baori

OCTOBER 2012

Lebbeus Woods, 1940-2012

Dismantling

Lower Manhattan National Park

Wall Mart

Cliff Nest

Sleeping Astronaut CausesEarthquake on the Moon

Memorial to a Buried Village

Landscapes by Remote Control

Founding Landscapes

Keys to the City

Garage Warfare

Version Control

Gossamer Systems

Lost Rivers

The City and its Citadels

[Images: Mars, courtesy of NASA].

Mars is an interesting platform where we can model these things. But I don’t

know that we’ll get there for another fifty years or so – and once we do get there,

I think that for many, many years, maybe many decades, it will function like

Antarctica does now: it will be an interesting scientific base that teaches us things

and is beautiful and charismatic, but not important in the larger scheme of

human history on Earth. It’s just an interesting place to study, that we can learnthings from. Actually, for many years, Mars will be even less important to us

than Antarctica, because the Antarctic is at least part of our ecosphere.

But if you think of yourself as terraforming Earth, and if you think about

sustainability, then you can start thinking about permaculture and what

permaculture really means. It’s not just sustainable agriculture, but a name for a

certain type of history. Because the word sustainability is now code for: let’s

make capitalism work over the long haul, without ever getting rid of the

hierarchy between rich and poor and without establishing social justice.

Sustainable development , as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It

doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do whatwe’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands,

or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all

our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re

not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them. So there’s a stupidity

involved, at the cultural level.

BLDGBLOG: In other words, your lifestyle may now be carbon neutral – but

was it really any good in the first place?

Robinson: Right. Especially if it’s been encoding, or essentially legitimizing, a

grotesque hierarchy of social injustice of the most damaging kind. And thetendency for capitalism to want to overlook that – to wave its hands and say:

well, it’s a system in which eventually everyone gets to prosper, you know, the

rising tide floats all boats, blah blah – well, this is just not true.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/spreading-ground.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/landscapes-by-remote-control.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/chand-baori.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/not-grid-but-fleet.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/founding-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/sleeping-astronaut-causes-earthquake-on.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/mehrangarh-fort.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/back-up-tut-and-other-decoy-spatial.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/foodprint-la.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/detecting-lost-rooms-with-architectural.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-previous-two-posts-have-led-to.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/keys-to-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/cliff-nest.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/memorial-to-buried-village.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/crashing-through-dark-matter-walls.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/lower-manhattan-national-park.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/model-warfare.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/operation-deep-sleep-or-dormant-robots.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/project-sanguine-and-dead-hand.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/monuments-of-misdirection.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/version-control.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/lebbeus-woods-1940-2012.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/hydro-monuments-of-rajasthan.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-cell-and-pyramid.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-city-and-its-citadels.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/fence-phone.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/antarctic-island-radio.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/books-received_19.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/tree-receivers.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/drawing-building-hearing.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/wall-mart.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/garage-warfare.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/lost-rivers.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/dismantling.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/gossamer-systems.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/san-andreas-architecture-for-fault.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/desert-traverse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/test-room.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/pop-up-forests-and-experimental.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/sound-signature.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/electromagnetic-test-town.html


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2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Intervi ew with Kim Stanley Robinson


24-hour bookstore people

SEPTEMBER 2012

Awakener

Caves of Nottingham

Applied Topology

AUGUST 2012

The Auditory Configuration ofHell

Morse Road

Bradbury Landing

British Exploratory LandArchive

As if dilating with the secretknowledge of great powers

Striper

Dot Urbanism

Maze Machine GardenRoundhouse Foundations

New York City Sand Pit

War Sand

DredgeFest 2012

Sailing beneath the city

Tuned Rocks

Field Studies

London Bells / UrbanInstruments

The Moon and theMeadowlands

Highways and Rivers Bureau

Below, buried beneath the very

roots of the trees

A narrative from the swamps ofBorneo

JULY 2012

Fire-Walking New York City

Fields of the Future

Urban Target Complex NationalMonument

JUNE 2012

Various forms of lithic disguise

Primary Landscapes

Perpetual Architecture

Venue

Buncefield Bomb Garden

Buy an Underground Kingdom

O.P. Tree

Books Received

MAY 2012

Buy a Prison

Hotels in Zero-G

There's No One There / Man-

We should take the political and aesthetic baggage out of the term utopia . I’ve

been working all my career to try to redefine utopia in more positive terms – in

more dynamic terms. People tend to think of utopia as a perfect end-stage, which

is, by definition, impossible and maybe even bad for us. And so maybe it’s better

to use a word like permaculture , which not only includes permanent but also

permutation. Permaculture suggests a certain kind of obvious human goal,

which is that future generations will have at least as good a place to live as what

we have now.

It’s almost as if a science fiction writer’s job is to represent the unborn humanitythat will inherit this place – you’re speaking from the future and for the future.

And you try to speak for them by envisioning scenarios that show them either

doing things better or doing things worse – but you’re also alerting the

generations alive right now that these people have a voice in history.

The future needs to be taken into account by the current system, which regularly

steals from it in order to pad our ridiculous current lifestyle.

[Images: (top) Michael Reynolds, architect. Turbine House, Taos, New Mexico. Photograph ©Michael Reynolds, 2007. (bottom) Steve Baer, designer. House of Steve Baer, Corrales, New

Mexico, 1971. Photography © Jon Naar, 1975/2007. Courtesy of the Canadian Centre for

Architecture, from their excellent, and uncannily well-timed, exhibition 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas ].

BLDGBLOG: When it actually comes to designing the future, what will

permaculture look like? Where will its structures and ideas come from?

Robinson: Well, at the end of the 1960s and through the 70s, what we thought –

and this is particularly true in architecture and design terms – was: OK, given

these new possibilities for new and different ways of being, how do we design it?

What happens in architecture? What happens in urban design?

As a result of these questions there came into being a big body of utopian design

literature that’s now mostly obsolete and out of print, which had no notion that

the Reagan-Thatcher counter-revolution was going to hit. Books like Progress As

If Survival Mattered , Small Is Beautiful , Muddling Toward Frugality , The

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/theres-no-one-there-man-made-lands.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/primary-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/dot-urbanism.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/buy-underground-kingdom.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/various-forms-of-lithic-disguise.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/below-buried-beneath-very-roots-of-trees.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/war-sand.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/theres-no-one-there-man-made-lands.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/dredgefest-2012.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/roundhouse-foundations.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/24-hour-bookstore-people.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/maze-machine-garden.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/fire-walking-new-york-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/buy-prison.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/highways-and-rivers-bureau.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/as-if-dilating-with-secret-knowledge-of.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-auditory-configuration-of-hell.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-narrative-from-swamps-of-borneo.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/applied-topology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/awakener.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/british-exploratory-land-archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-york-city-sand-pit.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/perpetual-architecture.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/hotels-in-zero-g.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/caves-of-nottingham_11.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/fields-of-future.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/op-tree.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/urban-target-complex-national-monument.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/venue.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-moon-and-meadowlands.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/bradbury-landing.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/striper.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/field-studies.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/buncefield-bomb-garden.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/tuned-rocks.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/london-bells-urban-instruments.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/sailing-beneath-city.htmlhttp://www.sorryoutofgas.org/http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/morse-road.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/books-received.html


8/46



Made Lands

Mobile Surroundsound

Vitamin C and Aloe

Under Angeles

SubBrit

Secret Soviet Cities

Perhaps it is not a city

Papercraft

Mega City Soundtrack

Water vs. World

Lost Lakes of the Empire StateBuilding

Astrobiology and DrownedNations

Performing Mars

APRIL 2012

Breaking Out and Breaking InFinale

Ephemeral islands and otherstates-in-waiting

Glass Hills of MarsHydro-Electro-Musical

Machinery

Building in a Bottle

Every House Has Cracks

Ghost Town Climatology

New York Quarry

Star Garden

Spaces on Spec

Tunnel Plug

Making Waves

Desert of the Real

MARCH 2012

Caves of New York

Burying Bits of the City: HongKong Underground

Room and Billboard

BeetleCam

Demolition Composites

Off to India

Star Wheel Horizon

Discipline & Punish: Papillon(1973)

FEBRUARY 2012

Mining the Lower East Side

Ground Environment Déjà Vu

Autonomous Angels ofMaintenance

HoverMast

Where'd the road go?: CoolHand Luke (1967)

Cropped

Forensic Flowers

The Pop It UpElectric Landscapes

Ball Games: The Great Escape(1963)

Liberation Terroir: The GreatEscape (1963)

Initial Points

Integral Urban House , Design for the Real World , A Pattern Language , and so

on. I had a whole shelf of those books. Their tech is now mostly obsolete,

superceded by more sophisticated tech, but the ideas behind them, and the idea

of appropriate technology and alternative design: that needs to come back big

time. And I think it is.

[Image: American President Jimmy Carter dedicates the White House solar panels, 20 June 1979.

Photograph © Jimmy Carter Library. Courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture].

This is one of the reasons I’ve been talking about climate change, and the

possibility of abrupt climate change, as potentially a good thing – in that it forces

us to confront problems that we were going to sweep under the carpet for

hundreds of years. Now, suddenly, these problems are in our face and we have to

deal. And part of dealing is going to be design.

I don’t think people fully comprehend what a gigantic difference their

infrastructure makes, or what it feels like to live in a city with public transport,

like Paris, compared to one of the big autopias like southern California. The feel

of existence is completely different. And of course the carbon burn is also

different – and the sense that everybody’s in the same boat together. This partlyaccounts for the difference between urban voters and rural voters: rural voters –

or out-in-the-country voters – can imagine that they’re somehow independent,

and that they don’t rely on other people. Meanwhile, their entire tech is built

elsewhere. It’s a fantasy, and a bad one as it leads to a false assessment of the real

situation.

The Mars books were where I focused on these design questions the most. I had

to describe fifteen or twenty invented towns or social structures based around

their architecture. Everything from little settlements to crater towns to gigantic

cities, to all sorts of individual homes in the outback – how do you occupy the

outback? how do you live? – and it was a great pleasure. I think, actually, thatone of the main reasons people enjoyed those Mars books was in seeing these

alternative design possibilities envisioned and being able to walk around in them,

imaginatively.

BLDGBLOG: Were there specific architectural examples, or specific landscapes,

that you based your descriptions on?

Robinson: Sure. They had to do with things that I’d seen or read about. And,

you know, reading Science News week in and week out, I was always attentive to

what the latest in building materials or house design was.

Also, I seized on anything that seemed human-scale and aesthetically pleasingand good for a community. I thought of Greek villages in Crete, and also the

spectacular stuff on Santorini. One of the things I learned, wandering around

Greek archaeological sites – I’m very interested in archaeology – is that they

clearly chose some of their town sites not just for practical concerns but also for

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/theres-no-one-there-man-made-lands.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/perhaps-it-is-not-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-waves.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/star-wheel-horizon.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/water-vs-world.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/spaces-on-spec.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/performing-mars.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/theres-no-one-there-man-made-lands.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/secret-soviet-cities.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/burying-bits-of-city-hong-kong.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/autonomous-angels-of-maintenance.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/hovermast.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/room-and-billboard.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/vitamin-c-and-aloe.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/ephemeral-islands-and-other-states-in.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/mobile-surroundsound.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-york-quarry.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/tunnel-plug.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/ball-games-great-escape-1963.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/star-garden.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/ground-environment-deja-vu.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/lost-lakes-of-empire-state-building.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/electric-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/breaking-out-and-breaking-in-finale.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/beetlecam.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/every-house-has-cracks.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/mining-lower-east-side.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/hydro-electro-musical-machinery.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/demolition-composites.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/papercraft.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/caves-of-new-york.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/desert-of-real.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/initial-points.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/cropped.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/pop-it-up.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/subbrit.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/whered-road-go-cool-hand-luke-1967.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/under-angeles.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/discipline-punish-papillon-1973.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/forensic-flowers.htmlhttp://www.cca.qc.ca/http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/mega-city-soundtrack.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/glass-hills-of-mars.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/liberation-terroir-great-escape-1963.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/building-in-bottle.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/ghost-town-climatology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/astrobiology-and-drowned-nations.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/india.html


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How to dismantle your door: AMan Escaped (1956)

Making Planning Popular

Object Cancers

Landscape Architecture forMachines

JANUARY 2012

A Prison Camp is for Escaping:Grand Illusion (1937)

Architectural Nonessentials

Breaking Out and Breaking In

Landscapes of Dredge

Space Jack

Submarine City

Drone Landscapes, IntelligentGeotextiles, GeographicCountermeasures

Remnant Infrastructure

Loop Geography as DefensiveTactic

The Baffler

DECEMBER 2011

Bioluminescent Billboards

Ice Island Infrastructure

We Can Move It For YouWholesale

Return of the Brick Swarm

Speleological Superparks

Brooklyn Vent

Drone Tax

A 7-Mile Rainbow for KimJong-il

Portfolio Futures

House of the Cave Bear

Mine Plug

Psychometric DrawingExperiments, ArchitecturalNon Sequiturs, and FreeAssociation

Urban by Nature

Sutured San Francisco

The Architecture of BananaControl

The Rounds

NOVEMBER 2011

Horizon Repair

The Limits of Preservation

Brick Swarm

Detection Landscapes

Aerial Sheriff

Debt Cemetery

Infra

Pole Farm

Project Ice ShieldUnnatural History

State of Air

aesthetic pleasure . They would put their towns in places where it would look

good to live – where you would get a permanent sense that the town was a work

of art, as well as a practical solution to economic and geographical problems.

That was something I wanted to do on Mars over and over again.

[Image: Photos of Greece, inspiration for life on Mars, taken by Kim Stanley Ro binson].

Mondragon, Spain, was also a constant reference point, and Kerala, in southern

India. I was looking at cooperative, or leftist, places. Bologna, Italy. The Italian

city-states of the Renaissance, in a different kind of way. Also, cities where public

transport on a human scale could be kept in mind. That’s mostly northern

Europe.

So those were some of the reference points that I remember – but I was also

trying to think about how humans might inhabit the unusual Martian features:

the cliffsides, the hidden cities that I postulated might be necessary. I was

attracted to anything that had to do with circularity, because of the stupendous

number of craters on Mars. The Paul Sattelmeier indoor/outdoor house, which

is round and easy to build, was something I noticed in Science News as a result of this fixation.

There was a real wide net I could cast there – and it was fun. If you give yourself

a whole world to play with, you don’t have to choose just one solution – you can

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OCTOBER 2011

The dirty politics of taste

Dye-Tracing Archaeology

El Resplandor

Thrill ing Wonder Stories 3

Eye Roller

Film Grenade

Do Black Swans Dream ofElectric Sheep?

Literary Climatology

Foamed InfrastructureCarry That Weight

SEPTEMBER 2011

Tar Creek Supergrid

Sea Caverns of Singapore

A Spatial History of Trapdoors

Altered Landscape

Tunnel / Countertunnel

On The Beach

Landform Building

The Shape of War

Impact / Collapse

Salt

Geologic City

Test City

AUGUST 2011

Bridges are AcousticInformation

Green Man

Studio-X NYC

Polygon Sublime

Fake Lake

Urban Hurricane

Farmland World

Animals in the OptoelectronicMetropolis

The Cloud

Architectural Formations thatMake Matter into Objects ofHistory

Layerscape

Island of Darwinian Machines

Switch

Installment Plan

The New Robot Domesticity

Subterranean MachineResurrections

Nazca City

Instruments, Devices andArchitectural Inventions

JULY 2011

Rebooting Massachusetts

Twisty Little PassagesBird's Eye View

L.A. Stunt School

Death and Marriage, Weatherand Birds

The House of MechanicalAnimals

describe any number of solutions – and I think that was politically true as well as

architecturally true with my Mars books. They weren’t proposing one master

solution, as in the old utopias, but showing that there are a variety of possible

solutions, with different advantages and disadvantages.

[Image: A photograph of Santorini taken by Kim Stanley Robinson].

BLDGBLOG: Speaking of archaeology, one of the most interesting things I’ve

read recently was that some archaeologists are now speculating that sites like the

Apollo moon landing, or the final resting spot of the Mars rovers, will someday

be like Egypt’s Valley of the Kings: they’ll be excavated and studied and

preserved and mapped.

Robinson: Yes, and places like Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, will be quite beautiful.

They’ll work as great statuary – like megaliths. They’ll have that charismatic

quality and, in their ruin, they should be quite beautiful. As you know, that was

one great attraction of the Romantic era – to ruins, to the suggestion of age –

and there will be something nicely contradictory about something as futuristic as

space artifacts suggesting ruins and the ancient past. That’s sure to come.

The interesting problem on Mars, and Chris McKay has talked about this, is that

if we conclude that there’s the possibility of bacterial life on Mars, then it

becomes really, really important for us not to contaminate the planet with

earthly bacteria. But it’s almost impossible to sterilize a spaceship completely.

There were probably 100,000 bacteria even on the sterilized spacecraft that we

sent to Mars, living on their inner surfaces. It isn’t even certain that a gigantic

crash-landing and explosion would kill all that bacteria.

So Chris McKay has been suggesting that a site like the Beagle or polar lander

crash site actually needs to be excavated and fully sterilized – the stuff may even

have to be taken off-planet – if we really want to keep Mars uncontaminated. In

other words, we’ve contaminated it already; if we find native, alien bacterial life

on Mars, and we don’t want it mixed up with Terran life, then we might have to

do something a lot more radical than an archaeological saving of the site. We

might have to do something like a Superfund clean-up.

Of course, that’s all really hard to do without getting down there with yet more

bacteria-infested things.

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/do-black-swans-dream-of-electric-sheep.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/polygonal-sublime.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/rebooting-massachusetts.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/farmland-world.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/impact-collapse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/geologic-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/la-stunt-school.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/subterranean-machine-resurrections.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/installing-machine-cloud.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/landform-building.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/el-resplandor.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/green-man.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/spatial-history-of-trapdoors.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/birds-eye-view.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-beach.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McKayhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/altered-landscape.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/bridges-are-acoustic-information.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/twisty-little-passages.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/thrilling-wonder-stories-3.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dirty-politics-of-taste.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/switch.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/urban-hurricane.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/foamed-infrastructure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/nazca-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/island-of-darwinian-machines.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/literary-climatology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/animals-in-optoelectronic-metropolis.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/test-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/installment-plan.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dye-tracing-lost-cities.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/eye-roller.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/carry-that-weight.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/layerscape.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/death-and-marriage-weather-and-birds.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/studio-x-nyc.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/film-grenade.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/salt.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/shape-of-war.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/fake-lake.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tunnel-countertunnel.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/architectural-formations-that-make.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/caverns-of-singapore.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/instruments-devices-and-architectural.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-robot-domesticity.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/house-of-mechanical-animals.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tar-creek-supergrid.html


11/46

2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Intervi ew with Kim Stanley Robinson


The Weather Bank

Geopolitical Redesign, or: ABridge Between Europe andAfrica

Insurrectionary Memory

Ruin Index

The role of smell in urbandesign

Interpretation-Based Spatiality

Gotham Sans

Situationist Drawing Device

Henry Waltz

Weather Warriors

Split Infinitives

Lo g

Dune Bank Suitcase

JUNE 2011

Calling All Agents

Urban Spelunking

Discontinuous, contingent, and

nontraditionally vulnerableChicagoland

Waiting for the River

Manhattan Interzone

City Double

The Hit List

The Subterraneans

A Can of Air, or: C.S.I.Duchamp

Bass Ganglia

Earth Moves

Peripheral Porosity

The Space of Preparation

MAY 2011

Urban Speculation in LosAngeles and Beyond

Landscape Futures Super-Trip

Underground

#

Beyond the Restrictions of theFactual

Art + Environment, LandscapeFutures, and a MillionReasons to Visit Reno

Applied Fictions Unit

Border Town

Urban Islands 2011

A Lesson in Abysses

APRIL 2011

Spacesuit: An Interview withNicholas de Monchaux

Infrastructural Opportunism

Stealth Objects and Scanning

MistEarthquake Sounds, Tsunami

Rocks, Future Trenches

Architectural Ecology

Fiction and the city

Canal Street Cross-Section

Time, Photography, and Spatial

[Image: Two painted views of a human future on Mars, courtesy of NASA].

BLDGBLOG: That’s the same situation as with these lakes in Antarctica buried

beneath the ice: to study them, we have to drill down into them, but by drilling

down into them, we might immediately introduce microbes and bacteria andeven chemicals into the water – which will mean that there’s not much left for us

to study.

Robinson: They’re already having that problem with Lake Vostok . The Russians

have got an ice drill that’s already maybe too close to the lake, and in the sphere

of influence of the trapped bacteria. And now people are calculating that the

water in Lake Vostok might be very heavily pressurized, and like seltzer water, so

that breaking through might cause a gusher on the surface that could last six

months. The water might just fly out onto the surface – where it would freeze

and create a little mountain up there, of fresh water. Who knows? I mean, at that

point, whatever was going on, in bacterial terms, with that lake in particular –that’s ruined. There are many other lakes beneath the Antarctic surface, so it isn’t

as if we don’t have more places we could save or study, but that one is already a

problem.

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Documents

BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson