2026 marks the dawn of a momentous era: humankind taking our first steps towards colonising Mars.

Later this year, NASA’s ESCAPADE probes will fly to the surface of the Red Planet, capitalising on its and paving the way for crewed flights in the near-future.

Settlers may one day construct a number of self-sustaining cities, altering the barren Martian surface and allowing humans to flourish away from Earth. This will have the convenient side-effect of extending the lifespan of collective human consciousness.

It’s a scenario posed by both Elon Musk (who, in 2024, of his plans to land on Mars within two years – though his firm SpaceX has since shifted focus to the moon), and one of the most acclaimed science-fiction novels of the last century: 1992’s Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Set in a then-future 2026, the book doesn’t rely on conflict with aliens or implausible technology for its action. The focus is instead on the infighting that occurs between the humans who believe that intelligent life is sacred and should spread, and those who maintain that the solar system must remain largely undisturbed.

In terms of accurately imagining the future, author Robinson made some lucky picks. According to his novel, Earth in 2026 will be dominated by “transnationals”, all-powerful corporations who preside over every facet of human activity. The United Nations is reduced to playing second fiddle to them: “It could not succeed against their desires and would probably never try, as it was their tool,” writes Robinson.

His vision shares traits with an earlier prediction made by Pulitzer prize-winning science writer David Dietz. When asked to , Dietz imagined widespread and rampant over-cultivation of resources, warning that “Competition will be keener, prices higher and luxuries fewer”.

Robinson used Red Mars to show future humans exploiting the environment as well as each other. Climate change is depicted as one of the drivers in prompting humankind to leave Earth, with central character Ann Clayborne viewing Mars as a fresh start – not just another resource to be picked dry. “You can’t just wipe out a three billion-year old planetary surface,” she remarks as the landing party discuss terraforming.

Another settler, Frank Chalmers, recalls the death of Earth’s coral reefs and panicked attempts to fertilise the Antarctic Ocean. His descriptions bear similarities with today’s proposed “climate megaprojects”, such as glacier stabilisation efforts and the re-greening of the Sinai peninsula.

Red Mars continues a trend seen in older speculative fiction, such as H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine from 1895, through its portrayal of a population divided. The “hundred” sent to the Red Planet are at loggerheads over how best to cultivate their new homeland, a theme further explored in the book’s two sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars.

Ann expresses concern over making the Martian air breathable for fear of harming any potential undiscovered native life: “It’s unscientific, and worse, it’s immoral,” she remarks.

Her character’s very human approach to a fantastic dilemma is one of the reasons why Red Mars is today held in high regard. The book received both Nebula and British Science Fiction Association awards, and never-quite-realised TV adaptations have been announced at various times (Terminator and Titanic director was at the helm of one before instead working on his Avatar universe).

Red Mars’ prequel novella – also called Green Mars – was even included on a CD placed aboard NASA’s Phoenix lander for its journey to the red planet in 2006, much to the of Robinson himself.

The author made further grounded guesses at the future in his writing outside of the Mars trilogy. He has also warned of the dangers of as well as pursuing technology in ways that aren’t inclusive.

In 2012, he published 2312, a novel that imagined an overheated Earth, catastrophic sea-level rise and a dismissal of our own era as “the Dithering”, in reference to humankind’s slow response to the current climate emergency.

In the same year, he at the San Francisco Conference, addressing the excitement around using pioneering technologies such as AI to overcome our problems. “[It] maybe has to be All People Plus,” he said, implying that tension between the haves and the have-nots is another potential challenge – one a lot closer to home than our neighbouring planet, 225 million kilometres away.

The Â鶹´«Ă˝ Book Club is currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s . Sign up and read along with us here.

Annie Jacobsen (Torva)

IN 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev declared in a joint statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. A year later, the number of atomic weapons globally began to fall from a peak of nearly 70,000. By 1989, the cold war was ending, and the world rejoiced at being less likely to die in a flash of light at 100 million °C – more than six times hotter than the centre of the sun.

Reporter Annie Jacobsen was nominated for a Pulitzer prize in 2016 and has written for the Jack Ryan TV series. Her extraordinary book Nuclear War: A scenario reminds us the nuclear nightmare never really ended, it just shifted from a duel to a Mexican standoff. She has consulted scientists, soldiers, emergency management experts and presidential advisors to imagine a scenario in which one of the world’s eight other nuclear powers attacks the US.

Her book delivers more detail than has been available to the public before. She even managed to get the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to declassify the origins of the “football”. This is a suitcase carried by a military aide who accompanies the US president at all times, containing the emergency action documents needed for them to initiate a nuclear strike.

We are taken minute by minute through the flight of an intercontinental ballistic missile as it journeys towards the US, carrying three nuclear warheads – a fraction of the total held by the US and Russia. When it strikes, millions are killed, buildings are vaporised, animals are burned alive in zoos and the first mushroom cloud is uploaded to social media.

But posting very quickly becomes a thing of the past as more bombs cut electricity. “The electromagnetic pulse of the bomb obliterates all radio, internet, and CCTV,” notes Jacobsen, an unsparing narrator. Panic, paranoia, comms breakdown and the failure of countermeasures (only ever tested in simulation) soon bring in other nations. Each is poised for a “decapitation strike”, where a country targets its enemy’s nuclear arsenal and the officials with the power to authorise action.

The speed at which Jacobsen’s conflict escalates explains why the Doomsday Clock, which shows how close we are to catastrophe, was set at .

Despite talks and promises of disarmament, Jacobsen outlines how the modern world is no more stable than during the days of the so-called Iron Curtain. Nuclear submarines roam international waters, with the USS Nebraska alone capable of “unleashing twenty times more destruction than all the explosives used in World War II, including both atomic bombs dropped on Japan”, she writes.

As well as graphic descriptions of what nuclear winds do to humans, Jacobsen describes the “nuclear winter” in detail. This is forecast to happen when 150 teragrams (150 million tonnes) of soot is lifted into the upper troposphere by the blast. Survivors will subsist under a sky thick with cyanides and vinyl chlorides from burning buildings. The attack’s radiation will decay, but take about 24,000 years to do so.

At the outset of her terrifying account, Jacobsen reveals that the US’s Single Integrated Operational Plan – a first-strike system active from 1961 until 2003 against the USSR, China and Soviet-aligned states – wasn’t hampered by the potential retaliatory attacks that would kill an estimated 100 million US citizens and many more millions in China, Russia and other countries.

After the cold war drama, Jacobsen leaves us with an opinion of her own: “Nuclear war is insane. Every person I interviewed for this book knows this.”

George Bass is a writer based in Kent, UK

Ěý