This past weekend, I sat on a panel at Arisia entitled the Future of Mars. All things considered, it was a great panel, and I was happy with my contributions. I did have a few thoughts about the panel afterwards, about what the conversation might mean, and where I’d like to take my thoughts regarding Mars in the future. First a quick biographical note. The first story I ever wrote was about Mars but I have an ambivalent relationship with it. Not that Mars cares, being a planet, but I go back and forth on the whole idea of what happens next to this planet. Mars, as a topic of speculative fiction, is the setting that never quite leaves science fiction. We're always twenty years from going there. We always learn some new discouraging fact about the planet. Dust, perchlorates, and even the possibility of microbial life, all make the effort to reach Mars that much harder to realize We keep talking about Mars and yet, year after year, we somehow fail to be on Mars. To be ...
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