A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through. Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith. 2023.
This book, about the possibility of humans settling space, is already pretty badly dated, but not for the reasons you might think. It’s a shame, because this was and is a very good topic that I’m very interested in, but I couldn’t stand this book.
It’s not dated because of the answer. The answer is that we are so far away technologically from being able to create space settlements that focusing on going there and living there right now is foolish. We’re centuries, not years, away from being able to do it safely over the long term, and the logistical problems of doing it are so complex and numerous that we’re better off staying put. It’s certainly possible that tomorrow all of that will change - we’ll figure out how to make truly renewable energy cheaply, and we’ll determine that babies can develop normally in zero gravity, and we’ll find a delicious food source that can be grown on Mars or the moon.
But it’s unlikely that we’ll figure out the answers to all of those problems anytime soon, and we do need the answers to all of them before we can live anywhere other than earth. And even when - and if - we solve all of them, that doesn’t mean we’ll be able to settle another planet without conflict or exploitation. Settlements on earth, after all, generally come with both. Technological solutions won’t fix social problems, or political problems. Mars can never be a paradise if it’s run by the same people running the world now. And some of the technological solutions to the unlivability of Mars could be put to better use, anyway - if terraforming tech really works, doesn’t it make more sense to just use it here and fix climate change?
I agree with all of this. The Weinersmiths did their research, and it shows; they think about the problem from every angle and they make a very convincing case (though, to be fair, I was ready to be convinced). I still hated this book, so much. Maybe hate is too strong. I’m glad it was written. My experience reading it was so bad that I almost didn’t finish. This book is written like a Twitter thread or a Tumblr post from 2013. It’s just so…smirky. I’m sure a lot of people like that kind of conversational style and depending on the topic or context I don’t mind it. I listened to a podcast episode with one of the authors and enjoyed that; it’s what made me pick up the book. But I don’t want to read internet-speak, at once smug and cringingly sincere, for several hundred pages when the subject is in any way serious. This is a serious subject, and a timely one, and I wish it had been treated seriously.
I get why it wasn’t - I get that a jokey, informal tone probably sells more books. But over this length, God, it grates. It’s too bad - I really did want to love this book.