The very long view

Here on Mars...
By Neila Seciov (of the Martian Society of Intergalactic Archaeologists)
Fast Books, 1995. 95pp., $12.95
Reviewed by Alex Bainbridge Subtitled "A Martian View of the Collapse of Earthly Civilisation in the 21st Century", Here on Mars... immediately reminded me of Is there Life on Earth? by Allen Myers. The latter is a collection of satirical articles originally published in the socialist newspaper Direct Action in the '70s. Like Here on Mars..., the article from which Myers' book draws its title pokes fun at the injustice of human society as we know it by contrasting it to the society of Martians. The technique is a useful one. It gives the authors the chance to send up the irrationality of the society we've got by posing an alternative cooperative model, implicitly arguing for social justice on Earth. At its best, Neila Seciov's book does this quite well. Seciov points to the dramatically widening gap between rich and poor as the fatal flaw of human society responsible for its ultimate collapse in the 21st century. From the standpoint of Mars in year 4095, there are numerous irrationalities to make fun of on Earth: bureaucratic waste, conspicuous consumption alongside impoverishment, luxury cash crops alongside starvation in the Third World, the alienation of the rat race, the so-called "trickle-down effect". Despite writing an entertaining and readable book, Seciov unfortunately does not penetrate far below the surface in this critique of human society. Seciov's Martian model, described as "neither communist nor capitalist, but something in between", in its essentials seems to be like contemporary capitalist society with some limits on individual wealth and partial regulation — as if that alone would be a utopia! The critique of Earthly society is consequently vague and contradictory. Additionally, Seciov seems to have little hope that human beings could ever transcend the hunger for power responsible for Earthly woes or that the majority could ever be convinced to organise society in our own interests. Myers' Martian character, by contrast, clearly declared that Earthly problems were the result of a social organisation still based on ownership. ("Humans are actually prevented from eating if they do not 'own' food. Not even helpless children are exempt from this requirement.") Consequently, she concluded that in fact there was not yet any life on Earth and that this would persist until the social system changed. However, it would be worth returning in "30 or 40 years ... to discover whether life has arisen there in the intervening period".