Book Review: “The Martian Chronicles”

September 29, 2024May 24, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Illustration depicting ‘Rocket Summer’ (image from The Black Cat Moan)*

They came because they were afraid or unafraid, happy or unhappy. There was a reason for each man. They were coming to find something or get something, or to dig up something or bury something. They were coming with small dreams or big dreams or none at all
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

When I was but a sprite, and before I became an avid reader of books (I preferred comic books), I read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It changed me, what I thought of books and what I felt about the power of stories. It made me cry. And perhaps that was when I decided to become a writer. I wanted to move people as Bradbury had moved me.

The 1970 Bantam book jacket aptly describes The Martian Chronicles as, “a poetic fantasy about the colonization of Mars. The story of familiar people and familiar passions set against incredible beauties of a new world…A skillful blending of fancy and satire, terror and tenderness, wonder and contempt.”

*Rockets land on Mars overlooking Bradbury Lane (illustration from Sutori)*

The Martian Chronicles isn’t really about Mars. True to Bradbury’s master metaphoric storytelling, The Martian Chronicles is about humanity. Who we are, what we are and what we may become. What we inadvertently do—to others, and finally to ourselves—and how the irony of chance can change everything. Despite the knowledge of no detectable amounts of oxygen, Bradbury gave Mars a breathable atmosphere: “Mars is a mirror, not a crystal,” he said, using the planet for social commentary rather than to predict the future.

From “Rocket Summer” to “The Million-Year Picnic,” Ray Bradbury’s stories of the colonization of Mars form an eerie tapestry of past and future. Written in the 1940s, the chronicles long with the nostalgia of shady porches with pitchers of lemonade, ponderously ticking grandfather clocks, and comfortable sofas. Expedition after expedition leave Earth to investigate and colonize Mars. Though the Martians guard their mysteries well, they succumb to the diseases that come with the rocketeers and grow extinct—not unlike the quiet disappearance of the golden toad, the Pinta giant tortoise, or the Bramble Cay melomys. Humans, with ideas often no more lofty than starting a tourist hot-dog stand, bear no regret for the native alien culture they exploit and eventually displace.

It is a common theme of human colonialism and expansionism, armed with the entitlement of privilege. Mars is India to the imperialistic British Empire. It is Rwanda or Zaire to the colonial empire of the cruel jingoistic King Leopold II of Belgium. Mars is Europe to Nazi Germany’s sonderweg. We need look no further than our own Canadian soil for a reflection of this slow violence of disrespect and apathy by our settler ancestors on the indigenous peoples of Canada.

Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves… Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
The Martian Chronicles

Tyler Miller of The Black Cat Moan makes excellent commentary in their 2016 article entitled “How Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ changed Science Fiction (and Literature).” The article begins with a quote from Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges (in the introduction to the Spanish-language translation of The Martian Chronicles: “What has this man from Illinois done, I ask myself when closing the pages of this book, that episodes from the conquest of another planet fill me with horror and loneliness?”

Remember, this was the 1950s … halfway through a century dominated by scientific discovery, and expansion. The 1950s saw developments in technology, such as nuclear energy and space exploration. On the heels of the end of World War II, the 1950s was ignited by public imagination on conquering space, creating technological futures and robotics. The 1950s was considered by some as the real golden age for science fiction, still a kind of backwater genre read mostly by boys and young men, that told glimmering tales of adventure, exploration, and militarism, of promising technologies, and often-androcratic societies who used them in the distant future to conquer other worlds full of strange and disposable alien beings in the name of democracy and capitalism. (In some ways, this is still very much the same. Though, it is thankfully changing…)

(Bantam 1951 1st edition cover)

Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is irrelevant. Ten year‐olds do not read the scientific literature.
Carl Sagan, 1978

*First edition book covers of Martian Chronicles (Doubleday, 1950); I, Robot (Grayson & Grayson, 1952); Childhood’s End (Ballantine Books, 1953); and Starship Troopers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959)*

Large idea-driven SF works that typified this time period included Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and his Foundation series.

It was at this time that Ray Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles. Though filled with the requisite rocket ships, gleaming Martian cities, ray guns, and interplanetary conquest, from the very start—as Borges noted—The Martian Chronicles departed radically from its SF counterparts of the time.

(Illustration on album cover of “Rocket Summer”, music by Chris Byman)

Instead of starting with inspiring technology or a stunning action sequence, or a challenging idea or discovery, Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles opens with a domestic scene.

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on the slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer’s ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open air, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, lowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for brief moment upon the land…
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Rocket Summer

Bradbury’s focus was on the domestic. Housewives fighting off the ice and snow of Ohio. A Martian woman “cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind.”

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of the empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnet dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard…you could see Mr. K in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle…

This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.

Something was going to happen.

She waited.
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Ylla

Bradbury’s gift to literature—and to his SF genre—was his use of metaphor. Unlike the science fiction of his colleagues, Bradbury’s stories are a lens to study the past and the present. According to Miller, “The Earthmen’s exploration and desolation of Mars allowed Bradbury to look not forward but backward at exploration and desolation on Earth, namely the European arrival in the New World. Just as Europeans landed in North and Central America wholly unprepared for what they found there, Bradbury’s Earthmen are unprepared time and again for the wonder and the horror of Mars. And just as European diseases decimated native people in the Americas, it is chicken-pox which wipes out the Martians.”

The back cover of the 2012 mass market paperback Simon & Schuster Reprint edition of The Martian Chronicles reads:

Bradbury’s Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn—first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars … and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.

“Ask me then, if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I’ll say yes. They’re all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we’ll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us; we’ll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we’ll give to the canals and the mountains and the cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do? We’ll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves.”

“We won’t ruin Mars,” said the captain. “It’s too big and too good.”

“You think not? We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.”
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, And the Moon be Still as Bright

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a profound and tender analysis of the quiet power humanity can wield unawares and how we define and treat ‘the other.’ It is a tragic tale that reflects only too well current world events where the best intended interventions can go awry. From the meddling friend who gossips to “help” another (only to make things worse) to the righteous “edifications” of a religious group imposing its “order” on the “chaos” of a “savage” peoples … to the inadvertent tragedy of simply and ignorantly being in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., the introduction of weeds, disease, etc. by colonizing “aliens” to the detriment of the native population; e.g., smallpox, AIDs, etc.). Bradbury is my favourite author for this reason (yes, and because he makes me cry…)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

TV Series Review: “The Expanse”—No Game (of Thrones), just a Damned Good Story

June 30, 2024May 2, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / 1 Comment

In 2015, Syfy released Season 1 of The Expanse, a stylish and intelligent science fiction (SF) TV series set 200 years in the future when humanity has colonized the moon, Mars and the Asteroid Belt to mine minerals and water. The six-season series is based on the novel series by James S.A. Corey with first novel “Leviathan Wakes”.

Humanity has split three ways culturally, ethnically and even biologically: Earth is currently run by the United Nations; Mars is an independent state, devoted to terraforming with high technology; and the Belt contains a diverse mix of mining colonies, settlers, workers and entrepreneurs. Belters’ physiology differ from their Earth or Mars cousins, given their existence in low gravity.

One of the creators Mark Fergus explains the setting and premise of The Expanse: “We always felt that the great struggle of a lot of sci-fi we grew up on takes us into a story world where we’ve already jumped over the interesting part, which is the first fumbling steps of us pushing off this planet, getting out into the solar system, sorting ourselves out as a race. All the struggle and the pain and the glory of that, usually sci-fi … hops over it.” Fergus and his colleagues were attracted by what he called “the scaffolding,” how it all got built. “Here is who built it. Here is how humanity started looking at itself differently and getting rid of old forms of racism and creating new forms of racism.” This is the story of The Expanse.

*Josephus Miller*, *cynical detective on Ceres*

The series starts by following three main characters: U.N. Deputy Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasaraia (Shohreh Aghdashloo) on Earth; cynical police detective Josephus Miller (Thomas Jane), a native of Ceres (in the Belt); and ship’s officer Jim Holden (Steven Strait) and his crew as each unravels a piece of a conspiracy (related to an unknown extra-solar material discovered on a Saturn moon) that threatens a fragile peace in the solar system and the survival of humanity.

First, Miller’s boss, Shaddid (Lola Glaudini) tosses him a missing person case: find Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), wayward daughter of a Luna-based shipping magnate (Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile); then Holden and four other crew members of the ice trawler Canterbury barely survive an attack that could spark a war between Earth and Mars. Miller and Holden eventually learn that the missing girl and the ice trawler’s fate are connected to a larger threat.

The only person who may stand a chance of figuring out the big picture is Chrisjen Avasarala, a brilliant 23rd-century Machiavelli, hoping to prevent simmering tensions between the United Nations, Mars and the Belt from erupting into all-out war. She will stop at nothing in her search for the truth, including gravity torturing a Belter or playing her friends and contacts like chess pieces to find answers.

*Chrisjen speaking to Belter under gravity torture*

What makes Chrisjen incredibly more interesting than, say a Circe or Claire Underwood, is that her scheming—as reprehensible as it may be at times—comes from a higher calling, not from lust for power or self-serving greed. She seeks the truth. And, like Miller, she struggles with a conscience. When her grandson asks if people are fighting again, Chrisjen says, “not yet; that’s why we [her contacts] need to talk and tell the truth; when people don’t tell the truth it always ends badly.” She may have been thinking of herself.

Chrisjen is a complex and paradoxical character. Her passionate search for the truth together with unscrupulous methods, makes her one of the most interesting characters in the growing intrigue of The Expanse. The Expanse further dignifies itself with subtle nuances of multi-layered social commentary—sewn into virtually every interaction.

After Chrisjen’s friend Franklin Degraaf (Kenneth Welsh), Earth ambassador to Mars, suffers as a casualty in one of her intel games, he quietly shares: “You know what I love about Mars?… They still dream; we gave up. They are an entire culture dedicated to a common goal: working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden. We had a garden and we paved it.” Chrisjen offers consolation to the loss of his position (because of her): “we may have prevented a war.”

*Chrisjen consoles Degraaf with a bottle of wine after causing his forced resignation as ambassador to Mars*

The subtle details and rich set-pieces of The Expanse universe rival the best world building of Ridley Scott. In fact, I was reminded of the grit and immediacy of Bladerunner. The Expanse is SF without feeling like it’s SF; it just feels real. Powerful storytelling—from judicious use of slow motion, odd shot angles, haunting music and background sounds, to superlative acting—draws you into a complete and realizable world.

Annalee Newitz of ARS Technica wrote, “the little details of this universe are so finely rendered that they become stories unto themselves, like the way interracial tensions developed on Ceres between humans who grew up gravity-deprived and spindly, versus those whose gravity-rich childhoods allow them to pass as Earthers.” Newitz adds that no clumsy Star Trek-style representation of exo-planetary civilizations occurs in The Expanse. It’s all humans. “Instead, there are political factions whose members stretch across worlds. And planets (or planetoids) whose populations are fragmented by class, race, and ideology. The politics here are nuanced, and we are always being asked to rethink who is right and who is wrong, because there are no easy answers.”

*Miller and Tavi Muss, his former partner at Star Helix, discuss the recent strange events in the solar system while at his apartment in Ceres*

Subtle but powerful differences between the Belter culture, Earthers and Martians (all human) includes language. Belters use a creole that’s a mix of several Earth languages that were spoken by the original human settlers in the Belt colonies. Resembling a Caribbean twang and cadence, words contain a mix of slang English, Chinese, French, Zulu, Arabic, Dutch, Russian, German, Spanish, Polish and others. For instance, “Inyalowda” means inner or non-belter. “Sa-sa” means to know. “Copin” means friend. An Expanse Wikia provides an in-depth list of Belter Creole used in the TV show.

Liz Shannon Miller of Indiewire.com shares: “In the 23rd century, the smart phones look fancier but their screens still crack. There are people in straight relationships and gay relationships and group marriages. There are still Mormons, who are preparing for a whole new level of mission. The rich live well. The poor struggle. It’s not “Star Trek” — there’s no grand glorious yet vague cause to which our heroes have devoted themselves. Survival is what matters.”

The Expanse is a sophisticated SF film noir thriller that elevates the space opera sub-genre with a meaningful metaphoric exploration of issues relevant in today’s world—issues of resource allocation, domination & power struggle, values, prejudice, and racism. These issues are explored particularly well through its diverse female protagonists with subtle nuances of multi-layered social commentary sewn into virtually every interaction.

*Julie Mao trapped onboard a stealth ship*

In Season 1 alone we are presented with Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), who is according to Detective Miller (tasked to find her) the “richest bachelorette in the system”, and an OPA collaborator; Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), a highly-skilled Belter technologist and former OPA agent; Camina Drummer (Cara Gee), a no-nonsense calculating Belter who used to work with OPA leader Anderson Dawes but now helps run Tycho Station that is building a giant interstellar ship for the Mormons; and Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) a sharp-minded ruthless political strategist in search of the truth.

(Left: Naomi Nagata)

*Drummer in a sticky situation during a coup on Tycho Station*

Season 2 and 3 introduce yet more powerful female characters with agency, such as Bobbie Draper, a staunch hard-fighting Martian marine who dreams of a terraformed Mars; and the Reverend Anna Volovodov (Elizabeth Mitchell), a gay Methodist doctor, who brings faith, hope, and inclusion to her acts of heroism.

(Left: Bobbie Draper)

*Anna Volovodov dealing with a protest on Earth*

I found the music by Clinton Shorter particularly appropriate: subtle, edgy, haunting, and deeply engaging: like its characters, the story, and world. The haunting title song, sung by Lisbeth Scott, lingers in each episode throughout the six seasons.

Amidst the unfolding intrigue of war, corruption and secrecy, a rich tapestry of characters take shape —with the added spice of an extra-solar alien entity (and a nod to panspermia). The alien entity is called the protomolecule based on its evolving nature (it eventually evolves into a ring-gate to other worlds). We eventually learn that the alien blue goo was sent by an alien civilization (directed panspermia) inside an interstellar asteroid (lithopanspermia) millennia ago; although it was captured by Saturn’s gravity to become one of its many moons (Phoebe), its target was Earth’s rich biology to bioengineer. Considered a bio-weapon, it is coveted by the politicians of Earth, Mars, and the Belt.

Miller, who was born on Ceres but received some cheap bone density implants—so he looks like an Earther—is a cynical detective (not above being bribed by merchants cutting corners) and trying hard to hide the fact that he has a big heart and is looking for meaning in his empty existence as a Star Helix cop (Miller: “No laws on Ceres; just cops.”) Belters call him a “well wala”, traitor to his own kind.

*Miller and Dawes discuss the disappearance of Julie Mao*

Ceres-born Anderson Dawes (Jared Harris), suave and ruthless leader of the separatist OPA (Outer Planet Alliance) challenges Miller: “I think that under that ridiculous hat there’s a Belter yearning to find his way home.” Except what is “home”? When asked by his new Star Helix partner, Dmitri Havelock (Jay Hernandez) about ‘why the hat?’, Miller quips, “to keep out the rain.” There is no rain on Ceres. Never was. Never will be.

The militant OPA is an activist organization that sells itself as a liberator for Belters but is really a terrorist revolutionary group, looking to shift the balance of power. Led by Dawes, the OPA’s ambitious agenda ranges from staging protests in the gritty Medina district of Ceres to stealing stealth technology and bio-weapons from Mars and Earth. Some of the best scenes occur between the intense Dawes and crusty Miller, as they banter over what it means to be a Belter in a solar system where they are clearly not players but sandwiched in a power struggle between Earth and Mars.

Dawes confides to Miller: “All we’ve ever known is low G and an atmosphere we can’t breathe. Earthers,” he continues, “get to walk outside into the light, breathe pure air, look up at a blue sky and see something that gives them hope. And what do they do? They look past that light, past that blue sky. They see the stars and they think ‘mine’… Earthers have a home; it’s time Belters had one too.”

Subtle. Not so subtle. The show takes a few opportunities to point out what we are doing to our planet. Cherish what you have. Cherish your home and take care of it. We’re reminded time and again, that we aren’t doing a good job of that.

Onboard the MCRN Donnager, Martian Lopez asks his prisoner Holden if he misses Earth and Holden grumbles, “If I did, I’d go back.” Lopez then dreamily relates stories his uncle told him about the “endless blue sky and free air everywhere. Open water all the way to the horizon.” Then he turns a cynical eye back on Holden. “I could never understand your people. Why, when the universe has bestowed so much upon you, you seem to care so little for it.” Holden admits, “Wrecking things is what Earthers do best…” Then he churlishly adds, “Martians too, by the look of your ship.” Lopez retorts, “We are nothing like you. The only thing Earthers care about is government handouts. Free food, free water. Free drugs to forget the aimless lives you lead. You’re shortsighted. Selfish. It will destroy you. Earth is over, Mr. Holden. My only hope is that we can bring Mars to life before you destroy that too.”

The underlying message in Expanse becomes clear in the last show of Season One. Near the end, Miller asks Holden what rain tastes like and Holden admits he never thought about it. Miller then asks, “How could you leave a place like Earth?…” Holden responds, “Everything I loved was dying.”

Critic Maureen Ryan of Variety says, “It’s to the show’s credit that it is openly political, and takes on issues of class, representation and exploitation.”

*Bobbie and her Martian crew patrolling Ganymede*

As the seasons progress (ending in Season 6), the plot doesn’t so much thicken as branch like a fractal tree or the braiding delta of a river into the sea, expanding as the galaxy itself into infinite space. Season 2 witnesses biological and political developments with the protomolecule, from the use of an entire station as a human laboratory to the testing of protomolecule-human hybrid weapons on Ganymede Station. Stationed there, Martian marine Bobbie Draper barely survives an encounter with a hybrid as it easily dispatches her entire crew and UNN soldiers alike. Events related to the secret war among powers to hold and control this alien weapon precipitate war between Earth and Mars.

*Chrisjen Avasarala questions Bobbie at an Earth-Mars summit inquiry into the incident on Ganymede*

The plot train goes into high gear in Season 3 with high stakes scenes of war, intrigue, and violent change. Through the various set-pieces of place, new characters are introduced and embed themselves in the larger story with amazing potency. One example of the various plot threads surrounding Ganymede Station introduces botanist Prax Meng (Terry Chen) and his 12-year old daughter Mei (Leah Jung), secretly taken from him by a Pierre Mao scientist to become a protomolecule hybrid. Introduced in Episode 8 (Pyre) of Season 2, Prax and kidnapped Mei immediately stir our hearts with their story. I was struck by how powerful a brief appearance by one character could be: Prax, who thinks he has lost Mei when the mirrors fell on Ganymede Station, finds himself on a refugee ship with Doris Bourne (Grace Lynn Kung), a botanist colleague from Mars. We are introduced to Doris and lose her within a single episode; yet we feel incredible pathos on her demise (thanks to their performances, and the circumstances that drive their short-lived story together).

*Doris and Prax onboard the refuge ship after the Ganymede incident*

The Expanse is filled with these potent vignettes, focused on one or two characters, that tug our heartstrings with personal drama. Several come immediately to mind: ‘Big Guy’s’ (Gugun Deep Singh) heartfelt sacrifice in Episode 12 (The Monster and the Rocket) of Season 2; the slaughter of all miners of Anderson Station, with particular focus on Marama Brown (Billy MacLellan) and his daughter Kiri (Raven Stewart), in Episode 5 (Back to the Butcher) of Season 1.

Throughout its expansive six seasons, The Expanse never loses sight of its strongest feature: its characters who each tell a heart-felt story and whose threads weave a greater story tapestry. This is a TV show that writes large through its many intimate stories; all smaller wholes entangled with the larger whole.

Variety’s Whitney Friedlander writes that The Expanse is Syfy’s most expensive series to date. It shows. And it shows well because it does not trade story for effects. Story comes first. The Expanse is a welcome breath of fresh air for high quality “space opera” science fiction on TV. It fills a gaping hole left by the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica in 2009.

p.s. Since my title includes a comparison of The Expanse with Game of Thrones, I feel compelled to state another important difference between these two highly successful TV shows, and ultimately why I disliked one as I loved the other: while both shows created fully-fleshed compelling characters that viewers quickly embraced and loved (or hated), GOT chose to wily-nily give them brutal (and often grotesque) deaths for no other apparent reason than to shock the viewer—creating a tension of suspicion and fear. Viewers became nervous for their favourite character. It was like a crap shoot and the viewer was the real victim. The death of virtually every character in the Expanse however—though also often a heart-wrenching surprise—could be explained and understood. This was because their demise filled the greater purpose of the overall story. That simple. I give ultimate credit to the writers of The Expanse. And shame on the Game of Thrones screenwriters and producers.

“Story must come first!”

*Julie Mao escaping imprisonment in the stealth ship*

Solaris: Planet as Alien Character in Science Fiction

November 28, 2021February 27, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / 1 Comment

*Kelvin (played by George Clooney) arrives on Solaris* *in Steven Soderberg’s 2002 film*

Some time ago, I participated in an inquiry to name my choice of “Best Alien in Science Fiction,” posed by John DeNardo at SF Signal. “Aliens are a classic trope dating back to the earliest days of science fiction,” John said. They are the quintessential “other” archetype in science fiction.

From conquering warlords (War of the Worlds) to instructing sages (The Day the Earth Stood Still) to victimized pacifists (Martian Chronicles), how the “other” is portrayed and how humanity interacts with it, has been explored throughout science fiction since it began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Of course, in science fiction—a metaphoric literature of grand scope—these ‘others’ / aliens make representation through archetype. So, the aliens of War of the Worlds represent a conquering nation; Klaatu of The Day the Earth Stood Still may represent a benevolent dictator; the Martians of Martian Chronicles represent our indigenous peoples under the yoke of settler colonialism and an exploitive resource-extraction mindset; and the monster of Frankenstein exemplifies the disabled/deformed unsavory departure from our ‘perfect’ self-image. Author Brian Ott tells us that “it is a profound mistake to interpret the genre [of science fiction] literally.” He reminds us that it is not what the aliens are but what they represent that matters (except when, in some cases, they are one in the same). Science fiction is both “the great modern literature of metaphor” and “pre-eminently the modern literature not of physics but of metaphysics,” adds Peter Nicholls, Australian scholar and critic.

*Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film of H.G. Wells’s book “War of the Worlds”*

In a previous article entitled “Dreams and Perceptions And ‘the Other’” I described an experience with the unfamiliar. Have you ever done the same? Looked backward while driving through a familiar scene to gain a different perspective? And just felt different for a moment? Like you’d entered a different dimension and briefly glimpsed ‘the other.’

What is it like to meet ‘the other’?

In story, characters are defined through their experience and their approach to the unfamiliar. A new relationship. A stranger in town. A different culture. An alien encounter… How does the character react? Is it with fear? Wonder? Curiosity? A mixture of these? By describing “the other” science fiction writers describe “us”, given that it is through our own eyes that the other is viewed and described.

In his book Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient Edward W. Said contended that for there to be an ‘us’, there has to be a ‘not-us.’ According to Patricia Kerslake of Central Queensland University, this arises from a postcolonial notion of ‘the Other’, through a mutual process of exclusion. This exclusion inspires the very idea of ‘alien’ by imposing expectation on perception. Kerslake argues that: “When one culture imposes its perceptions on another, in that it begins to see the Other not as they are but as, in Said’s words, ‘they ought to be’, then the process of representation becomes inevitable: a choice is made to see a ‘preferred’ real.”

*Klaatu greets humanity in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”*

In her 1975 article “American SF and the Other,” Ursula K. LeGuin unequivocally scolded the Western SF genre for representing and promoting colonialism and androcratic motives by “othering” or making inconsequential the poor, the uneducated, the marginalized and women.

…The question involved here is the question of The Other—the being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin; or the number of its legs and heads. In other words, there is the sexual Alien, and the social Alien, and the cultural Alien, and finally the racial Alien…

The people in SF are not people. They are masses, existing for one purpose to be led by their superiors…

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself–as men have done wo women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation–you may hate it, or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.

You have, in fact, alienated yourself.
Ursula K. LeGuin

Written 45 years ago, Le Guin’s scathing article may have accurately represented the North American science fiction community of writers of that time. Today, despite the remnants of a strong old guard that still promotes a patriarchal colonialist hegemony, the science fiction genre has matured and grown beyond this self-limiting view. This is partly because current authors—many who are women and many who are representatives of minority or marginalized groups—have given SF a new face and voice that promises to include equality, inclusion, and a fresh look at exploration and ‘the other.’ In most cases it is ‘the other’ whose voice—for so long missing—is now being expressed.

The genre of science fiction has diversified and matured to embrace “mundane science fiction,” literary fiction, speculative fiction, climate fiction, cli-fi, eco-fiction, indigenous futurisms and more. Each of these genres provide new opportunities that give voice to ‘the other’ from women (Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and N.K. Jemison’s The Broken Earth series) to disabled people (Mishell Baker’s Borderline) to the indigenous human (Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves) to the non-human (Costi Gurgu’s RecipeArium) and the environment such as water (Emmi Itäranta’s The Memory of Water and my own A Diary in the Age of Water).

My Choice for ‘Best’ Alien Character: Solaris

The most memorable aliens for me have been those that helped illuminate our history and our very humanity, whether they played the archetype of simple antagonist or misunderstood as “commentator” on human prejudice, insecurities, greed, heroism, compassion and honor. I can think of several aliens who have provided excellent examples of this: the victimized ” prawns” of Peter Jackson’s District 9 come to mind. Each provided a platform for the exploration and exposition of human’s strengths and weaknesses. How we handle or even recognize “the other” is very compelling and illuminating.

My choice for alien character is the ‘self-aware’ planet in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris: see my film review of Steven Soderbergh’s film interpretation of Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris in a previous article on this site. What follows is a brief summary:

In response to his friend’s plea, a depressed psychologist with the ironic name of Kris Kelvin (George Clooney), sets out on a mission to bring home the dysfunctional crew of a research space station orbiting the distant planet, Solaris. Kelvin arrives at the space station, Prometheus, to find his friend, Gibarian, dead by suicide and a paranoid and disturbed crew obviously withholding a terrible secret from him. It is not long before he learns the secret first-hand: some unknown power (apparently the planet itself) taps into his mind and produces a solid corporeal version of his tortured longing: his beloved wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone) who years ago had committed suicide herself. Faced with a solid reminder, Kelvin yearns to reconcile with his guilt in his wife’s death and struggles to understand the alien force manifested in the form of his wife. He learns that the other crew are equally influenced by Solaris and have been grappling, each in their own way, with their “demons,” psychologically trapping them there.

*Crew onboard the Prometheus orbiting Solaris: Snow (Jeremy Davies), Rheya (Natascha McElhone), Kelvin (George Clooney) and Gordon (Viola Davis)*

Ironically, our hero’s epic journey of great distance has only led him back to himself. The alien force defies Kelvin’s efforts to understand its motives; whether it is benign, hostile, or even sentient. Kelvin has no common frame of reference to judge and therefore to react. This leaves him with what he thinks he does understand: that Rheya is a product of his own mind, his memories of her, and therefore a mirror of his deepest guilt—but perhaps also an opportunity to redeem himself.

*Kelvin and his ‘dead’ wife Rheya onboard the Prometheus orbiting Solaris*

Solaris is the epitome of the “other”, a force and entity unrecognizable and unfathomable. Lem’s existentialist portrayal of “the other”—and by extension of humanity—serves as excellent commentary on what is important to us and our identity. Unlike the familiar human-like figures of a Spock, Zhaan or the fremen, Solaris accomplishes its ‘other’ role through arcane manipulation of the human characters’ dreams and yearnings. We never understand its motivations or intelligence, yet we are drawn to its force and reflective mirror of our souls. It is its very incomprehensibility that attracts us, as to an abstract artwork, and challenges our very identities. Solaris shows neither judgment nor morality. It exists through the lens of paradox. Both there and not there. Fluid but enduring. Fractured yet whole. Like water.

All lead to the ultimate question asked of science fiction: who are we and why are we here?

*Kelvin arrives at the space station orbiting Solaris*

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.