Subject: Review: ICEHENGE by Kim Stanley Robinson

From: [email-masked] (Michael Lichter)
Date: 15 Jul 1998 15:02:29 -0400

ICEHENGE by Kim Stanley Robinson
      Orb, ISBN 0-312-86609-7, 1998, 287pp, US$13.95
           Review Copyright 1998 Michael I. Lichter

Emma Weil senses that something strange is happening on the RUST EAGLE
during what should be a routine mining tour of the asteroid belt. Her
fellow crew members are having urgent, whispered conversations that cease
whenever she comes near. All she hears are whispers of mutiny and loud
denials that anything is happening. At the same time, ominous news comes
from Mars, her home: it appears that an armed struggle for Martian
independence is about to break out. When the mutiny and the war come to
pass, Emma will be forced decide which side she is on. And that is only
the beginning.

Originally published in 1984 (based partly on stories printed in 1980 and
1982), ICEHENGE will seem eerily familiar to readers of Robinson's more
recent Mars Trilogy. The background is much the same: Mars has been
colonized under the supervision of enormous corporations and powerful
Earthly governments. The dictatorial Committee rules without the consent
of Mars' (human) natives, supervising the development and terraforming of
the red planet. A combination of American and Soviet ideals unite the
Martians, who are then met with ruthless, bloody repression. Despite the
similarities, however, ICEHENGE represents an alternate history of Mars
and Earth, one in which the Soviet Union never collapsed, in which the
Martian Reds never emerged, and in which terraforming proceeded much more
slowly.

As in the Mars Trilogy, a new gerontological process that prolongs human
lifetimes by hundreds of years is central to the story. Fewer than 100
years of life pass before memory begins to fade and one's own past becomes
something known only through official records and personal journals. The
lines between memory and fiction, history and biography blur. Ironically,
in this future eye-witness accounts of historical events are lost not
because of a lack of eye-witnesses, but because personal experience is no
longer credible.

In the second of ICEHENGE's three sections, Hjalmar Nederland, a senior
Martian archaeologist begins a dig at one of the domed cities destroyed in
the revolution, three centuries in the past. Mars' official history says
that there was no organized revolutionary movement, only rioting, and that
those who died at the time died at the hands of the rioters. Nederland
believes differently. During his search for evidence, news arrives that an
artificial structure has been discovered on Pluto, a vast ice sculpture
that is dubbed "Icehenge." When Nederland uncovers Emma Weil's journal, he
believes he has found both the truth about the revolution and the story of
Icehenge's origin.

Despite Nederland's impressive evidence-gathering and his stodgy
insistence that his answers are correct, young Edmond Doya believes
otherwise. The final section of ICEHENGE is devoted to Doya's fascination
with Icehenge and his heroic attempt to solve the riddle of its existence.
Was it aliens? Martian revolutionaries? A contemporary prankster? Doya
hopes that his journey to Pluto will uncover the indisputable facts.

Unlike the Mars Trilogy, where Robinson's central concerns are political
and ecological, in ICEHENGE pride of place goes to the human construction
of historical truth. Nederland and Doya fight political watchdogs, the
academic establishment, and eventually each other over the content and
meaning of the past; Emma Weil *is* the past (or is she?). Since academics
are often portrayed in SF as either pompous buffoons or absolute geniuses,
Robinson's textured depiction of the social process of knowledge
construction is very welcome.

As (almost) always, Robinson's attention to detail, especially to the
details of setting and character, make his storytelling vivid and
credible. At times in the Mars Trilogy Robinson seems absolutely obsessed
with the minutiae of Martian geography; fortunately, he does not get so
carried away in this book.  If you are a fan of his, you will not regret
paying the price of this trade reissue.  I doubt it will be coming out in
mass paperback form. If you have not read Robinson before, this is not a
bad introduction, especially since it's short!  Check it out.

   %T      Icehenge
   %A      Kim Stanley Robinson
   %C      New York
   %D      July 1998
   %I      Orb
   %O      trade paperback, US$13.95
   %G      ISBN 0-312-86609-7
   %P      287pp

Michael I. Lichter, ABD
UCLA Department of Sociology / Center for the Study of Urban Poverty
<mailto://[email-masked]> <http://www.ben2.ucla.edu/~lichter/>