bldgblog_ comparative planetology_ an interview with kim stanley robinson
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
1/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 1/46
PREVIOUS POSTS
JANUARY 2015
Algorithms in the Wild
Th e ElectromagneticFortification of the Suburbs
A Cenotaph for Tailings
Colossal Cave Adventure
Brooklyn Super Food
Music for the Asset Bubble
A Ci ty in the Glacier
DECEMBER 2014
Glitches in Spacetime, Frozenin to the Built Environment
Immaculate Ecologies
Monumental
Under London
NOVEMBER 2014
The Neurological Side-Effectsof 3D
Space Noir
Just-in-Case Informatics
Art Arm
Etch a Sketch
Tales of the Crash: AnInterview with Nick Arvin
Spatial Basics
"We don't have an algorithmfor this"
Preservation, Infrastructure,and the Museology of Crime
Goldberg Robotics
Amidst the Machines: A Visit tothe Tesla Factory
The Future is Accessible byAutomobile
In The Dust Of This Planet
OCTOBER 2014
Touchscreen Landscapes
The Civic Minimum
A Geography of Devices
We Can Terraform It For You
WholesaleLandscape, Redacted
Atmospheric Crystallography
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.
ARCHITECTURACONJECTUR
URBASPECULATIO
LANDSCAPFUTURE
ARCHIVES
2015: January
2014: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2013: December / November /
October / September / Augus / July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2012: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2011: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2010: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2009: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2008: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2007: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2006: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / May / April / March / February / January
2005: December / November / October / September / Augus
/ July / June / March / February / January
2004: August / July
ABOUT BLDGBLOG
BLDGBLOG ("building blog") is
written by Geoff Manaugh. Th
227 Más Siguiente blog» Crear un blog Acceder
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/amongst-machines-visit-to-tesla-factory.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/we-dont-have-algorithm-for-this.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/tales-of-crash-interview-with-nick-arvin.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/etch-sketch.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/just-in-case-informatics.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-neurological-side-effects-of-spaces.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/monumental.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/colossal-cave-adventure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-electromagnetic-fortification-of.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/algorithms-in-wild.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/colossal-cave-adventure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/spacetime-glitches-frozen-into-built.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/immaculate-ecologies.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/goldberg-robotics.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FForty-Signs-Rain-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553585800&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/space-noir.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/amongst-machines-visit-to-tesla-factory.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/under-london.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMLWL6DIAE_0.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-civic-minimum.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/we-dont-have-algorithm-for-this.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-electromagnetic-fortification-of.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSixty-Days-Counting-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553585827&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/just-in-case-informatics.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-cenotaph-for-tailings.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/landscape-redacted.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/etch-sketch.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/in-dust-of-this-planet.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBlue-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553573357&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/touchscreen-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-city-in-glacier.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinsonhttp://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://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/tales-of-crash-interview-with-nick-arvin.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/we-can-terraform-it-for-you-wholesale.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-geography-of-devices.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGreen-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553572393&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/preservation-infrastructure-and.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/music-for-asset-bubble.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/spatial-basics.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-future-is-accessible-by-automobile.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogyhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRed-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553560735&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/brooklyn-super-food.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAntarctica-Kim-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553574027&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/algorithms-in-wild.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/monumental.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-neurological-side-effects-of-spaces.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/art-arm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013_03_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_bldgblog_archive.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/atmospheric-crystallography.html
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
2/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 2/46
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.
TWITTER / RSS / INSTAGRAM LANDSCAPE FUTURES THE BLDGBLOG BOOK
BLDGBLOG is published by
Visit our partner sites:
Edible Geography Pruned Venue
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-fall.htmlhttp://twitter.com/bldgbloghttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/cultivating-map.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/demolition-school.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/weather-is-future-of-urban-design.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-future-tbd.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811866440?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0811866440http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/beneath-forest-buildings.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811866440?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0811866440http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/landmarks-of-chinese-cryosphere.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/shapegarden.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/powers-of-quarantine.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-comet-as-landscape-art.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/buffer-space.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/worshipping-crash.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/x.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/circular.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/untitled-landscapes.htmlhttp://pruned.blogspot.com/http://www.ediblegeography.com/http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/seismic-suburb.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/military-cave-logistics.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/road-trips-routes-and-landscape.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/architecture-by-bee-and-other-animal.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FArchaeologies-Future-Desire-Science-Fictions%2Fdp%2F1844675386&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/empty-landscapes-of-invisible-dangers.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8415391145/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=8415391145&linkCode=as2&tag=bldgblog-20http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-most-indoors.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/procedural-brutalism.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/right-to-light.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-spacecraft-cemetery.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/procedural-forestry.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/survey-says.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/celestial-chiaroscuro.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-great-age-of-clouds.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/implied-landscapes.htmlhttp://instagram.com/bldgbloghttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/buy-lighthouse.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/minecraft.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-underground-wind-bulbs-of-utah.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-snow-mine.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/collapse.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8415391145/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=8415391145&linkCode=as2&tag=bldgblog-20http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/life-on-subsurface-interview-with.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/natos-underground-roman-super-quarry.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/emergency-exit.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/go-fish.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/buy-fort.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/bunker-simulations.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-museum-at-bottom-of-sea.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/silver-village.htmlhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBlue-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson%2Fdp%2F0553573357&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/through-cracks-between-stars.htmlhttp://v-e-n-u-e.com/http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
3/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 3/46
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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
4/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 4/46
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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
5/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
6/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 6/46
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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
7/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Intervi ew with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 7/46
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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
8/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
9/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 9/46
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
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/urban-by-nature.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/debt-cemetery.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/object-cancers.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/submarine-city.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/state-of-air.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/project-ice-shield.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/baffler.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/psychometric-drawing-experiments.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/sutured-san-francisco.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/limits-of-preservation.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/architectural-nonessentials.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/7-mile-rainbow-for-kim-jong-il.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/drone-tax.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/aerial-sheriff.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/making-planning-popular.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/drone-landscapes-intelligent.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/landscapes-of-dredge.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/brick-swarm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/remnant-infrastructure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-can-move-it-for-you-wholesale.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/bioluminescent-billboards.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/ice-island-infrastructure.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/return-of-brick-swarm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/rounds.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/loop-geography-as-defensive-tactic-in.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/detection-landscapes.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/architecture-of-banana-control.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-dismantle-your-door-man-escaped.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/horizon-repair.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/landscape-architecture-for-machines.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/brooklyn-vent.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/mine-plug.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/portfolio-futures.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/space-jack.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/prison-camp-is-for-escaping-grand.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/house-of-cave-bear.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/speleological-superparks.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/future-of-unnatural-history.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/pole-farm.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/infra.html
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
10/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 10/46
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
-
8/9/2019 BLDGBLOG_ Comparative Planetology_ an Interview With Kim Stanley Robinson
11/46
2/3/2015 BLDGBLOG: Comparative Planetology: An Intervi ew with Kim Stanley Robinson
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparative-planetology-interview-with.html 11/46
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.
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/time-photography-and-spatial-equipment.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/landscape-futures-super-trip.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/architectural-ecology.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/log.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/canal-street-cross-section.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/urban-islands-2011.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/earth-moves.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/urban-speculation-in-los-angeles-and.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/subterraneans.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/waiting-for-river.htmlhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/welsh-soldiers-are-currently.htmlhttp://bl