Life on Mars: The Science and Fiction of Terraforming and the Future of Planet Earth
The Anthropocene, the geological age of humanity, is associated with a key feature: the power of technoscientific intervention into the Earth’s environment. This transformative potential became apparent in the second half of the twentieth century when the science and the fiction of “terraforming”, of turning extreme or extraterrestrial into Earth-like environments, gained traction. Hopes of venturing into Space became as pervasive as perceptions of humans overexploiting and polluting the Earth. The popular vision of settling sustainable communities on Mars saw an upswing in the recent decade of anthropogenic global environmental change.
This project explores the science and fiction of Mars settlement with the help of terraforming as a creation of new environments in Space as well as blueprints for the technological reconstruction of the Earth’s environment. The aim is to describe the Anthropocene not simply as an epoch that endangers the Earth but primarily as an epoch that essentially transformed the understanding of life to a minimalist principle of survival through infinite metabolic conversion and technological substitution. This understanding conjoined images of recreation and creation, of paradisiacal pasts and eco-technological futures. The question whether ‘postplanetary’ life, life that is not tied to a specific planet but transcends planetary boundaries, will be possible and desirable may become one of the most challenging questions of our future.
Final report
Project aim and development
The aim of this project has been to explore the science and the fiction of space settlement with technologies of “terraforming”. Terraforming technologies, so the project argued, create new environments in space and they serve as blueprints for the technological reconstruction of the Earth’s environment. From this perspective, the current geological age of the Anthropocene can be understood and studied not simply as the epoch that endangered planet Earth but also as the epoch that essentially transformed the understanding of life and environment.
During the course of the project, I explored twentieth-century technologies of transforming the Earth – of terraforming Earth and other planets. I studied the connections between space ecology and systems ecology, plant physiology, plant genetics and forestry, as well as climate science and climate engineering, fields that historically contributed to the idea and practice to recreate environment on the planetary scale. These fields, I showed, created technoscientific blueprints for a sustainable life and gave expression to visions of closed artificial habitats and life-support systems.
I also studied concepts, tools, models, and infrastructures that scientists employed to bridge the scales from an experimental laboratory setting to the planetary scale. Model systems made it possible to imagine life and environment as postplanetary, as tied not to a specific planet but transcending planetary boundaries. My study of the science of plant engineering and forestry in climate laboratories developed in the 1960s illustrates the spatial and temporal scaling practices and effects of environmental technoscience in the 20th century.
Another important aim and feature of this project has been to study the concept of the Anthropocene itself and to ask how the Anthropocene can be approached from the perspective of a historian in collaboration with other fields and disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, in order to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of our present-day age of humanity and its power to intervene in and recreate the environment.
Project implementation
The project has been developed around three related themes. The first was the “ecosphere”, a concept and tool of containing life and living systems on Earth and beyond. I studied historical sources and secondary literature from ecology and space ecology since the 1950s, taking approaches from history of science and STS. A second topic was the “phytotron”, an ex situ technology to experiment with climate-modulated chambers to engineer and optimize plant life on Earth and beyond. I consulted archival and printed material to research the case of the Stockholm phytotron in the 1960s. My third research theme addressed the motifs and practices of terraforming in (extra-) terrestrial science fact and fiction as related to Western environmental narratives. My study material consisted of science fiction film in relation to past and ongoing Mars projects. The material I consulted came from European and North American regions, mostly the US, Sweden, and Germany.
In March 2018 I presented my work at the conference “Life on Earth and Beyond: Emergence, Survivability, and Impact on the Environment”, in Bertinoro, Italy. In February 2019 I had the opportunity to visit the facilities of the Biosphere 2 project in Tucson, Arizona. I was also actively involved in the organization and program committee of the large international conference “Crafting the Long Tomorrow: New Conversations & Productive Catalysts Across Science and Humanities Boundaries as the Global Emergency Worsens”, on site at Biosphere 2.
I was able to pay two research visits to the Research Training Group KRITIS “Critical Infrastructures: Construction, Functional Crises and Protection in Cities” at Technical University of Darmstadt (November 26 – December 6, 2018; November 11 – December 6, 2019). I discussed my project work in regard to the notion of “criticality”, including the role of preparedness, resilience, and vulnerability of prototype ecological systems.
In March 2020, the Covid-pandemic prevented some of the planned project work and collaborations. Due to restrictions on travel and closure of archives, the research plan was delayed. Conferences were postponed or cancelled altogether. I was not able to accept the invitation to discuss my project with members of the interdisciplinary project “Origin and Condition of Appearance of Life” at CNRS in Paris. The Darmstadt collaboration was paused. At the same time, I faced additional work in my leadership tasks as Head of Division and Head of Department at KTH. The use of project funds had to be deferred. The plan to publish my monograph on the ecoscience and fiction of terraforming with Springer Press by the end of the project was delayed. The funds I have not been able to use will be returned.
Most important conclusions
The project, which was carried out on ca. 20 % of full time incl. lkp and OH costs, produced a number of results. The most important conclusion from the project concerns the relation of systematic plant experimentation in a laboratory setting to the Anthropocene debate. With my study of the sociotechnical imaginaries of planets as plantations I could relate the twentieth-century monocultures to the legacy of colonial practice currently discussed under the notion of the “Plantationocene” and to the high-modern laboratory sites on Earth and future visions of terraforming other planets.
New research questions
The project generated novel research ideas and questions on terraforming which I hopefully will be able to pursue further. The most interesting issue is the issue of “planetary seeding”. This vision combines ex-situ conservation and terraforming technologies through genetically engineering organisms that could be released to generate whole ecological systems on another planet as well as on earth, for example after a planetary-scale environmental disaster. Synthetic terraforming as the interplay of science fiction and current science fact of geoengineered climates and seedlings upscales the 1960s phytotron technology which combined laboratory climates and forestry on Earth.
Cooperation and communication
I presented the project work and the project results at conferences and in workshops. I was invited as keynote lecturer and as roundtable panelist on the ecosphere model, on environment and technology, on climate science and science fiction, and on the Anthropocene. I co-organized one conference directly on the project topic and two conferences on the closely related broader theme of environmental humanities. My public media contributions include podcasts, interviews, and public lectures. I also lectured about the project on several occasions. Project-related teaching activities include regularly teaching and further developing the first-cycle course Science Goes Fiction: Science Fiction, Film and Technological Futures in a Historical Perspective at KTH. For 9th-year high school students I taught about space science and fiction at the Rymdforskarskolan, or Christer Fuglesang-dagarna, organized by Astronomisk Ungdom in 2021 and 2022.
Most important publications
Andrea Westermann and Sabine Höhler, Writing History in the Anthropocene. Theme Issue Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020) 4. Partly Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/toc/gege/46/4
Andrea Westermann and Sabine Höhler, "Writing History in the Anthropocene: Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation". Introduction to special issue "Writing History in the Anthropocene ", Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020), 4, pp. 579-605.
Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.13109/gege.2020.46.4.579
Sabine Höhler, "Earth, a Technogarden: Planting for the Planet in Sweden's First Phytotron, 1950-1970". Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020) 4, special issue "Writing History in the Anthropocene", pp. 706-728.
Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.13109/gege.2020.46.4.706
Sabine Höhler, "Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment"
Technosphere Magazine, Dossier "Spheres", HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, June 20, 2018.
Open Access: https://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/p/Spheres-2NtHXDHoP5bfPcKDJjRjdN
Sabine Höhler, "Knowledges: Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography"
in: Franziska Torma (Ed.), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age ("A Cultural History of the Sea", Vol. 6), London, Bloomsbury Press 2021, pp. 21-44.
Sabine Höhler, "The Global Environment: A History of Paradoxes", H-Environment Roundtable on Perrin Selcer, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth. New York, Columbia University Press 2018. H-Environment Roundtable Review 10 (2020) 11, pp. 14-20.
https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/contributed-files/env-roundtable-10-11.pdf
Sabine Höhler, "Spaceship Earth: From the Environmental Age to the Anthropocene, Part 2" – Podcast Episode (37 min). SHPERE – A Podcast on the Evolution of Global Environmental Governance, January 20, 2021.
On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3EWk65rPAiB5K9wtlhuYeR
Sabine Höhler "Spaceship Earth: From the Environmental Age to the Anthropocene, Part 1" – Podcast Episode (42 min). SHPERE – A Podcast on the Evolution of Global Environmental Governance, December 16, 2020.
Online on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/30LGraGp6WK3Gk0VZiMGKX
The aim of this project has been to explore the science and the fiction of space settlement with technologies of “terraforming”. Terraforming technologies, so the project argued, create new environments in space and they serve as blueprints for the technological reconstruction of the Earth’s environment. From this perspective, the current geological age of the Anthropocene can be understood and studied not simply as the epoch that endangered planet Earth but also as the epoch that essentially transformed the understanding of life and environment.
During the course of the project, I explored twentieth-century technologies of transforming the Earth – of terraforming Earth and other planets. I studied the connections between space ecology and systems ecology, plant physiology, plant genetics and forestry, as well as climate science and climate engineering, fields that historically contributed to the idea and practice to recreate environment on the planetary scale. These fields, I showed, created technoscientific blueprints for a sustainable life and gave expression to visions of closed artificial habitats and life-support systems.
I also studied concepts, tools, models, and infrastructures that scientists employed to bridge the scales from an experimental laboratory setting to the planetary scale. Model systems made it possible to imagine life and environment as postplanetary, as tied not to a specific planet but transcending planetary boundaries. My study of the science of plant engineering and forestry in climate laboratories developed in the 1960s illustrates the spatial and temporal scaling practices and effects of environmental technoscience in the 20th century.
Another important aim and feature of this project has been to study the concept of the Anthropocene itself and to ask how the Anthropocene can be approached from the perspective of a historian in collaboration with other fields and disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, in order to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of our present-day age of humanity and its power to intervene in and recreate the environment.
Project implementation
The project has been developed around three related themes. The first was the “ecosphere”, a concept and tool of containing life and living systems on Earth and beyond. I studied historical sources and secondary literature from ecology and space ecology since the 1950s, taking approaches from history of science and STS. A second topic was the “phytotron”, an ex situ technology to experiment with climate-modulated chambers to engineer and optimize plant life on Earth and beyond. I consulted archival and printed material to research the case of the Stockholm phytotron in the 1960s. My third research theme addressed the motifs and practices of terraforming in (extra-) terrestrial science fact and fiction as related to Western environmental narratives. My study material consisted of science fiction film in relation to past and ongoing Mars projects. The material I consulted came from European and North American regions, mostly the US, Sweden, and Germany.
In March 2018 I presented my work at the conference “Life on Earth and Beyond: Emergence, Survivability, and Impact on the Environment”, in Bertinoro, Italy. In February 2019 I had the opportunity to visit the facilities of the Biosphere 2 project in Tucson, Arizona. I was also actively involved in the organization and program committee of the large international conference “Crafting the Long Tomorrow: New Conversations & Productive Catalysts Across Science and Humanities Boundaries as the Global Emergency Worsens”, on site at Biosphere 2.
I was able to pay two research visits to the Research Training Group KRITIS “Critical Infrastructures: Construction, Functional Crises and Protection in Cities” at Technical University of Darmstadt (November 26 – December 6, 2018; November 11 – December 6, 2019). I discussed my project work in regard to the notion of “criticality”, including the role of preparedness, resilience, and vulnerability of prototype ecological systems.
In March 2020, the Covid-pandemic prevented some of the planned project work and collaborations. Due to restrictions on travel and closure of archives, the research plan was delayed. Conferences were postponed or cancelled altogether. I was not able to accept the invitation to discuss my project with members of the interdisciplinary project “Origin and Condition of Appearance of Life” at CNRS in Paris. The Darmstadt collaboration was paused. At the same time, I faced additional work in my leadership tasks as Head of Division and Head of Department at KTH. The use of project funds had to be deferred. The plan to publish my monograph on the ecoscience and fiction of terraforming with Springer Press by the end of the project was delayed. The funds I have not been able to use will be returned.
Most important conclusions
The project, which was carried out on ca. 20 % of full time incl. lkp and OH costs, produced a number of results. The most important conclusion from the project concerns the relation of systematic plant experimentation in a laboratory setting to the Anthropocene debate. With my study of the sociotechnical imaginaries of planets as plantations I could relate the twentieth-century monocultures to the legacy of colonial practice currently discussed under the notion of the “Plantationocene” and to the high-modern laboratory sites on Earth and future visions of terraforming other planets.
New research questions
The project generated novel research ideas and questions on terraforming which I hopefully will be able to pursue further. The most interesting issue is the issue of “planetary seeding”. This vision combines ex-situ conservation and terraforming technologies through genetically engineering organisms that could be released to generate whole ecological systems on another planet as well as on earth, for example after a planetary-scale environmental disaster. Synthetic terraforming as the interplay of science fiction and current science fact of geoengineered climates and seedlings upscales the 1960s phytotron technology which combined laboratory climates and forestry on Earth.
Cooperation and communication
I presented the project work and the project results at conferences and in workshops. I was invited as keynote lecturer and as roundtable panelist on the ecosphere model, on environment and technology, on climate science and science fiction, and on the Anthropocene. I co-organized one conference directly on the project topic and two conferences on the closely related broader theme of environmental humanities. My public media contributions include podcasts, interviews, and public lectures. I also lectured about the project on several occasions. Project-related teaching activities include regularly teaching and further developing the first-cycle course Science Goes Fiction: Science Fiction, Film and Technological Futures in a Historical Perspective at KTH. For 9th-year high school students I taught about space science and fiction at the Rymdforskarskolan, or Christer Fuglesang-dagarna, organized by Astronomisk Ungdom in 2021 and 2022.
Most important publications
Andrea Westermann and Sabine Höhler, Writing History in the Anthropocene. Theme Issue Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020) 4. Partly Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/toc/gege/46/4
Andrea Westermann and Sabine Höhler, "Writing History in the Anthropocene: Scaling, Accountability, and Accumulation". Introduction to special issue "Writing History in the Anthropocene ", Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020), 4, pp. 579-605.
Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.13109/gege.2020.46.4.579
Sabine Höhler, "Earth, a Technogarden: Planting for the Planet in Sweden's First Phytotron, 1950-1970". Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft/Journal for Historical Social Sciences 46 (2020) 4, special issue "Writing History in the Anthropocene", pp. 706-728.
Open Access: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.13109/gege.2020.46.4.706
Sabine Höhler, "Ecospheres: Model and Laboratory for Earth's Environment"
Technosphere Magazine, Dossier "Spheres", HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, June 20, 2018.
Open Access: https://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/p/Spheres-2NtHXDHoP5bfPcKDJjRjdN
Sabine Höhler, "Knowledges: Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography"
in: Franziska Torma (Ed.), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age ("A Cultural History of the Sea", Vol. 6), London, Bloomsbury Press 2021, pp. 21-44.
Sabine Höhler, "The Global Environment: A History of Paradoxes", H-Environment Roundtable on Perrin Selcer, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth. New York, Columbia University Press 2018. H-Environment Roundtable Review 10 (2020) 11, pp. 14-20.
https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/contributed-files/env-roundtable-10-11.pdf
Sabine Höhler, "Spaceship Earth: From the Environmental Age to the Anthropocene, Part 2" – Podcast Episode (37 min). SHPERE – A Podcast on the Evolution of Global Environmental Governance, January 20, 2021.
On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3EWk65rPAiB5K9wtlhuYeR
Sabine Höhler "Spaceship Earth: From the Environmental Age to the Anthropocene, Part 1" – Podcast Episode (42 min). SHPERE – A Podcast on the Evolution of Global Environmental Governance, December 16, 2020.
Online on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/30LGraGp6WK3Gk0VZiMGKX