Sometimes people joke that the only way they can escape their family would be to move to Mars.
Clearly author Joe Mungo Reed doesn’t think this way because, in his speculative fiction / science fiction novel Terrestrial History (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), he tells a multi-generational story in which a family is pivotal in the colonization of the red planet.
In the following email interview, Reed talks about what inspired and influenced this sci-fi story.
Photo Credit: © Tom Trevatt
To begin, what is Terrestrial History about, and when and where does it take place?
Terrestrial History is a four-generation family saga, intertwining stories of a present-day physicist, Hannah, her son Andrew, who becomes a politician, her granddaughter Kenzie, who also becomes a physicist and helps colonize Mars, and Kenzie’s son, Roban, born in a Martian colony and trained to prospect for minerals in space.
Where did you get the idea for Terrestrial History?
I read Mark O’Connell’s book Notes From An Apocalypse and found myself horrified by some of the details about Mars colonization contained in the book. It seemed like there were all sorts of reasons not to go and live there — such as radiation, the difficulties of finding water and uncertainty about how well children would grow up in a lower-gravity environment — which didn’t square with the apparent excitement people have about being blasted off to Mars by SpaceX or whomever…
I imagined what a child born on a tiny, precarious colony on Mars might think to know that their parents chose this, perhaps at the expense of trying to preserve the earth. I worked backwards from that point, I suppose.
You kind of just answered this, but is there a significance to Roban living on Mars as opposed to the moon, a space station, or some other planet in our solar system? Or even one in a different system?
I suppose that I chose Mars because this is actually something people consider possible, perhaps even within current lifetimes, even if I personally think that these people are underestimating some of the challenges and disadvantages. The book is not quite the really practical sci-fi of writers like Andy Weir and Kim Stanley Robinson, but I wanted it to be grounded in some of the ideas about space exploration and expansion that are floating around right now (pun partially intended…).
Also, why did you decide to have the characters be family as opposed to friends or coworkers or people connected in some other way?
I wanted the relation of characters to be generational, down a lineage, because that is so often a part of conversations about ecology and society. People worry about the world that they’re leaving to their kids, and kids worry about the world that they’re inheriting. By no means does one have to have offspring to care about the future, but I think that those relations are charged in an interesting way. For my generation, millennials, arguments about things like housing and wealth distribution with baby boomers didn’t just happen abstractly but in reality between grown children and their parents at the Thanksgiving table. In due course, I’m sure, the children of millennials will come to political consciousness and be plenty mad as well…
Also, I love a family saga because of the way that it captures the rhythms of generations; the fact we want to give our children more than we had, and our tendency to overcorrect or overcompensate for our own childhoods. I also liked paralleling stories. I enjoy thinking about how age shapes perspective. When one is young, in a child’s role, certain things that your elders do might seem wrong, but then when you’re older, living that other context, you might come to understand things you didn’t before.
Terrestrial History sounds like a science fiction story, but not a hard sci-fi story or a space opera one. How do you describe it, genre-wise?
As I touched on, the aim of the book was not to dig too deeply into the physics. I have tried to keep things accurate, but I’m probably more interested in the social and ethical questions. It’s one thing to work out how a society will feed itself and find resources — and these are big questions, addressed by some wonderful writers — and it’s another to think about what kind of society and what kind of psychologies will evolve in a space colony. What would it be like to be born knowing you would never see the sea, for instance? Or to see a very limited range of living creatures or plants? As I explore in Roban’s sections of the book, a whole range of language — metaphors and figures of speech relating to natural phenomena on Earth — would become redundant. Presumably people would begin to think very differently…
In terms of tags, I suppose that I’d place the book in the “speculative fiction” box, though I’m happy for it to be called sci-fi. I’d also like it to be seen as a family saga. If I’m allowed, can it be all three of these!?
It can.
Now, Terrestrial History is your third novel after We Begin Our Ascent and Hammer. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Terrestrial History but not on anything else you’ve written?
For sure. I’m a huge Emily St John Mandel fan. I also really love Jennifer Egan; Visit From The Goon Squad and The Candy House draw such resonant connections between characters, voices, and eras and I wanted to channel a bit of that. Richard Powers’ work was also an influence. He loves to put his characters in a wider context — generationally, socially, even ecologically — and that was something that I was influenced by.
What about non-literary influences? Was Terrestrial History influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
I played the video game Outer Wilds at some point in the drafting process, and I’m sure that some elements of that game will have had an influence: the slightly elegiac quality, perhaps, and the sense that the wonders of space should necessarily bring us back to appreciation of the wonders of our own planet.
Sci-fi novels like Terrestrial History are sometimes stand-alone stories and sometimes part of larger sagas. But History sounds like it’s a one-and-done kind of thing.
Yes. I would say that as far as I’m concerned at this point the story of these characters is done. The polyvocal quality of the novel was very important to me, and — to sound a little pretentious, no doubt — I wanted the different points of view to work together like different verses or movements in a piece of music, complimentary but also distinct in crucial ways. My sense is that everyone has sung their piece, as it were.
Having said that, I loved working in a more speculative mode, so hopefully this won’t be the last time that readers will encounter me writing in this style and addressing these kinds of themes.
Earlier I asked if Terrestrial History was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Terrestrial History could work as a movie, show, or game?
I’d have to say that I think it would work best as a TV show. As I’ve been saying, I’ve aimed for an episodic, recursive pattern to the novel, and I suspect that this might make it work as the basis for a limited series. In the book, I cut between different timelines, and I think that this quality would fit with the extra freedom provided by a show, which can necessarily be a little more fragmentary than a movie.
Having said all that, I work with screenwriters on the master’s course that I teach on, and I’m conscious of the very different, and very acute, way that they think about story. They might well contradict what I’ve said, and they’d probably be right.
And if someone wanted to make a TV show based on Terrestrial History, who would you want them to cast as Hannah and Roban?
Hannah is written as roughly my own generation, so we’re looking for someone of around my age with ability to convey wryness, acuity, and a certain laconic quality. Also, they need to be able to do a good Scottish accent without going over the top, so perhaps a Brit with a bit more exposure to the varieties of Scottish accents would be ideal… Assuming we have a generous budget and some persuasive producers, I’m going to swing big and go for Carey Mulligan [Saltburn].
We first meet Andrew in middle age. He’s a devoted father and setting out on what will be a successful career in politics. He’s principled and charismatic in his sincere way. We’re looking for some earnest, vegan dad energy then. Maybe it’s the time in [Star Wars‘] Ewan McGregor’s career when he can offer just that? Also, we know he can do the accent.
One of Kenzie’s main characteristics is that she’s quite tall. Who is tall? I’m going to resist the urge to go on IMDB to research actor’s heights. [Fleabag‘s] Phoebe Waller-Bridge has just popped into my head as someone who seems tall, so she’s got the gig.
Roban first appears in the narrative as a preteen, so I’m a bit at a loss as to who to cast for the role. Also, how detailed is this hypothetical scenario? Maybe we’re not going to be shooting for three years or so while we sort out all the preproduction stuff, so this actor is maybe eight right now… In the world of writers, being under forty counts as “young” so the idea of an eight-year-old acting prodigy hurts my head. No one should have talent at that age. I’m going to leave it to the casting director, who is hopefully free of my impulse to petty envy.
So, is there anything else you think people need to know about Terrestrial History?
As I hope is apparent in the novel itself, I really had a lot of fun writing it. It was a pleasure to have such a long timeline — over 100 years! — to play with.
I also think that it’s the most character-driven novel I’ve written. I’m happy with the way that the characters I’ve been talking about came out on the page. I wanted to grapple with characters who wish for the same thing but approach that thing in very different ways, because they’re wired differently. There’s cause for upset, tension, and misunderstanding in such a situation, but also the possibility for reconciliation and resolution, because these characters are acting out of love, albeit differently.
Finally, if someone enjoys Terrestrial History, which of your other novels would you suggest they check out next and why that one and not the other one?
I would say that each of my books is quite different. One influence that I haven’t yet mentioned here is Kazuo Ishiguro, who I admire so much for the way he has such range. I love the way that he’s written historical novels, speculative novels, social novels, fantasies and allegories, etc. etc…. This jumping around is so exciting, because it’s actually logical. Most of us read in different genres, so why not write in different genres? I suppose that my career thus far has been a low-key attempt to do an Ishiguro.
We Begin Our Ascent is a sports novel. It’s quite inward-looking by design because the project was to convey the kind of insularity and obsession necessary to succeed in the incredibly demanding world of professional cycling. As such, it’s much more about personal psychology where Terrestrial History is about family relations and collective psychology.
Hammer is about the art world and about politics. I think meditative might be the right word. I was wanting to think about the value of art and the meaning of art, and while I hope that I approached those subjects through rounded, human characters, it is a more idea-driven book than Terrestrial History. It’s also a bit dark, because the art world is cynical. It’s undeniably gross to sell a painting for $100 million. Not every person in that book is trying to save the world.
I’m aware that I’m waffling and not offering a concrete answer. I’d love it if readers picked up either book. The project I’m currently working on is a bit of a mash up: a historical piece with some speculative elements. We can all eagerly await me working out how to complete that.
