Ice and Ecotrauma in Isaac Asimov’s “The Martian Way”
Keywords:
ice, ecotrauma, space mining, anthropogenic change, environmental ethics, matter, science fictionAbstract
This article examines Isaac Asimov’s novella “The Martian Way” (1952) as a work that exposes the entanglements of the trauma of the environment with the ecological trauma of the humans. The narrative re-envisions the Cold War energy crisis for a future era and visualizes the pursuit of hydropower as the appropriation of one of the ice fragments of Saturn’s rings. In doing so, it problematizes space mining and the traumatization of the environment. I examine the infliction of varied forms of violence on ice in “The Martian Way” and underscore human blindness to nonliving or inorganic matter. This analysis of the novella also focuses on how human characters suffer the consequences of their own violence on the environment they transform. Mobilizing the concept of ecotrauma, I demonstrate that the ice in “The Martian’s Way” agentially responds to anthropogenic violence. This article contributes to ecocritical discussions on the ethical mattering of inorganic matter such as water. My analysis encourages thinking beyond a singular species and necessitates a critical environmental perspective that includes nonliving entities within the domain of ethical mattering and thus moves beyond life-centered environmental worldviews.
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