Icehenge
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted July 2, 2024
Buy from Bookshop or Amazon. A purchase through our links may earn us a commission.
The image to the right is the new Tor Essentials reprint that came out June 11, linked to above for Bookshop and Amazon. It is not what I read, and I have no idea if there have been any revisions to the text that I did read. My trade paperback came out in 1998, but this "novel" was originally published in 1984. The reason for the quotation marks is this is better described as a 'fix-up' of stories, two of which had been previously published. More specifically, it is a triptych of connected novellas. The middle one, which is original to the book, is the longest. The first and third novellas are not identified by the title used for their first publications, instead all are headed by the name of the person providing the narration, and the date. So, "Emma Weil - 2248 A.D." is a slightly edited form of "To Leave a Mark" from the November 1982 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The middle story is "Hjalmar Nederland - 2547 A.D." The third part, "Edmond Doya - 2610 A.D." was originally "On the North Pole of Pluto," first appearing in 1980 in the Damon Knight edited anthology Orbit 21. This could be considered part of Robinson's Mars Trilogy and later novels, 2312 and Aurora, or else an alternate history version of a similar future. Many of the concepts and technologies from the later books appear, but there are some differences, and discrepancies as to when they were first developed. Even portions of the trilogy were previously published in shorter stories, and it is evident Robinson had been thinking of this type of future history for a long time. If part of the same history, the second and third stories would be taking place after 2312, and slightly concurrent with Aurora.
The title refers to a collection of megalithic ice structures at Pluto's north pole. The what, why, when, and who is the subject of these stories. Emma Weil is an ecologist, one of the most successful designers of Martian habitats, as well as environmental controls for spaceships and orbital habitats. She is on a ship headed to Ceres, but it takes a detour to rendezvous with two other craft. She had already had suspicions that something was off, due to locked doors in sections of the ship she should have access to, plus no one, not even the captain of the ship, an old friend, would tell her what was going on. It turns out that in conjunction with a brewing revolt against the Mars Development Committee, and the fact Mars would soon be on the opposite side of the sun, a group calling themselves the Mars Starship Association had stolen two mining craft, with the intention of hooking them up together, and reworking their engines, to create what they hope will be the first interstellar starship. The leader of MSA was a former lover of Emma's, Oleg Davydov. He had proposed extrasolar expeditions several times, but they were always rejected as too expensive and time consuming, and likely to fail.
They wanted Emma to help them with environmental, farming/hydroponics, and recycling systems. She refuses at first, but then the challenge proves to hard to resist, plus Davydov is not the only one she knows that will be making the journey, and she wants them to be as safe as possible. She doesn't want to go with them though. Emma already misses Mars and wants to get back. She is writing a journal so she doesn't forget anything, as well as to present both sides of the story to the Mars Committee if that becomes necessary. They strip her ship down to just what is needed to return to Mars, then the MSA heads outwards. Emma had seen something in one of their offices that indicated they planned to stop off at Pluto to leave a marker to show they had made it that far, as well as revealing their eventual destination. The revolt on Mars is just beginning when she gets back to New Houston, where she meets members of the resistance. She loves Mars but hates the Committee, so she joins the cause, and at the end of her journal says they will escape, head north, and hide in caves in rift valleys. Before they leave New Houston, they witness Committee Police collapse the dome, which traps and kills a large portion of the population, whether or not they were part of the resistance.
Hjalmar Nederland was born in New Houston, and spent his early years as part of a Mars Survey team, criss-crossing the planet multiple times, mapping everything and noting mineral deposits, as well as potential underground aquifers. Later he became an archaeologist and teacher. He was successful in being allowed to excavate New Houston, always having doubts about the official Committee story of the revolt. While there, his childhood memory of witnessing the dome collapse comes back to him. A half-buried surface vehicle is found north of the dig, with two boxes of printed documents. Underneath dirt that had come through a broken window he finds Emma's journal, although at first he just tosses it into one of the boxes with all the other papers. Be aware that one of the technologies mentioned here, and later in the trilogy of novels, is life-extension treatments. It has been about thirteen years since I last read the trilogy so I can't remember details, but I know several characters that were in all three books, one being about 230 years old at the end. Nederland is over 300, and he is still alive in the last story, 63 years later. I can't remember how often the treatments had to be administered. He wonders if Emma or any of the other resistors had survived, and if so, would they have a way to access the life extension treatments.
Once he finally reads Emma's journal and learns about the Mars Starship Association, he starts an intensive search for more information. He discovers mentions of Davydov and his two ships disappearing several years prior to Emma's meeting them. Thinking Emma likely survived, he heads a group looking for her, using a map from her journal. He foolishly leaves the others and heads out on his own, at one point leaving the rover and walking into a rift valley he believes leads to the red dot on Emma's map. He thinks he sees her, follows her to a cave, but he loses sight of her. He has to go back since his air supply is low. He later realizes Emma was probably a hallucination. When they get back to New Houston the big news is the Icehenge structures discovered by a survey ship. Nederland writes several books about Emma and the MSA, convinced the starship crew created Icehenge. Edmond Doya, Nederland's great-grandson thinks differently. He had read all his ancestor's books when he was younger, and was fascinated by the ideas, but his research yielded different speculations. He became friends with another man who had written many books claiming Icehenge was the creation of an ancient alien civilization, but he didn't believe that either. Doya was convinced Icehenge was fairly recent, even more recent than the MSA starship, and that it was a hoax. Who would do such a thing, why, and how old was it exactly?
Doya mounts another expedition to Pluto, financed by the person who is his number one suspect for having constructed Icehenge, although she denies it, and threatens him with a libel lawsuit if he ever mentions her name in connection with it. Quite a few other scientists are part of the expedition, even the ancient alien conspiracy guy, who turns out to be the most receptive to the idea he is completely wrong. Almost everyone else kept clinging to their personal theory, including Nederland, whom Doya had offended for even doubting his research. I won't reveal the details, but Icehenge turns out to be both a hoax, and a monument to Davydov's starship at the same time. That expedition, successful or not, was in the spirit of what took humanity to Mars, the asteroid belt, and the outer planets. Why go to Mars? Why go to another star system? Because they are there, and there is information to be found. I dropped a clue or two along the way, so you might be able to figure out who built Icehenge, or at least the most likely suspect.
Over and above that mystery and drama, there are several interesting ideas about what might happen if humans could live much longer than currently possible. One thing that happened on Mars, to conserve resources, was the restriction on reproduction. Nederland had met Doya's mother while she was still pregnant, and wondered how they had gained permission for a child. Also, living so long meant not necessarily keeping up with descendants unto the nth generation. It was the first time he had met his grand-daughter, and he didn't see why he ever would except for that random encounter. The first sentence in Nederland's journal is, "Memory is the weak link." Living hundreds of years normally meant multiple careers during a lifetime, the learning of multiple disciplines, something that would prohibit total recall of everything learned or experienced during that time. In addition to long life and a healthy body, a healthy mind was the norm, hardly any mention of dementia which plagues many today. Whether any of that will or could happen in our future, it is still a meaningful speculation, as are all the technological breakthroughs that might get us to Mars, and beyond. Robinson is not a scientist himself, but he is a diligent researcher, as well as an able craftsman of character development and visual description. Many's the time I felt I could see the beautiful Martian landscape, as well as icy Pluto. Part of this are as good as anything in the trilogy, which I kept thinking I need to read again soon. Highly recommended.
We would appreciate your support for this site with your purchases from Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, and ReAnimusPress.
