Digging up the future: Icehenge (1984) by Kim Stanley Robinson

A moving meditation on revolution, knowledge, and human longevity 

On Mars, experienced archaeologist Hjalmar Nederland is excavating the ruins of a domed city destroyed hundreds of years earlier. Nederland knows that he is digging up his own birthplace - he is 310 years old. It is only the written record that tells him about his origins in New Houston, however. While biotechnology allows humans to live over 600 years, their memories can cover only a fraction of that time. Knowledge, then, is a site of struggle - because he who controls the past, controls the future.

Originally published in 1984, Icehenge is an early book by the American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. Rather than a true novel, it is a set of three linked novellas - two of which had been published previously. While these stories are a clear precursor to Robinson's better known Mars trilogy (1993 - 1996), they have a unique power of their own. With settings that range across our solar system, Icehenge is a thought provoking exploration of the struggle for revolution, the uses and abuses of knowledge, and the personal and social effects of extreme human longevity.

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A colder war

In the future imagined in Icehenge, great strides have been made in space exploration and humans have colonised much of the solar system. On Earth, the Soviet Union still exists and the Cold War continues; Mars is run by a repressive Committee which exposes colonists to the worst of both the American and Soviet systems.

Part 1 is set in 2248 and takes the form of a journal written by Emma Weil, a specialist in life support systems. She serves on a mining vessel which is abruptly captured by its mutinous crew and then joined by two other ships commandeered in the same way. The mutineers are revolutionaries led by Weil’s former lover, the charismatic Davydov. Weil debates whether to assist the rebels with their reckless mission - to link the mining vessels into a jury-rigged starship, and attempt to found a rogue colony.

Part 2 is set in 2547 and focuses on archaeologist Hjalmar Nederland. He gains long-awaited permission to excavate the ruins of the Martian city of New Houston, destroyed during an uprising 300 years earlier. Nederland does not believe the official story, which is that revolutionaries destroyed their own city and caused the deaths of thousands. He uncovers evidence - including Weil’s journal - which appears to support his theory that the Committee were responsible for the massacre but covered it up. However, he is overshadowed by the discovery of a mysterious structure on Pluto.

Part 3 is set in 2610 and follows Edmund Doya, a blue-collar worker, amateur archaeologist, and great-grandson of Hjalmar Nederland. He doggedly follows the case of the icehenge discovered on Pluto, and eventually gets the chance to visit it. He is determined to discover whether the structure was built by Davydov’s revolutionaries, by benign aliens, or - in his favoured theory - that it was the work of a hugely wealthy hoaxer, who fabricated Weil’s journal.

Doomed revolutions

In one way or another, the desire for revolution hangs over all of the linked stories. In Part 1, Emma is faced with a choice - leave the solar system altogether in an attempt to found a new colony, or return to Mars and join the revolutionary movement there. She must make her choice while believing that both initiatives are doomed to fail. Robinson describes the powerful desire for change, which may fade but does not disappear forever, even in the face of impossible odds. 

In Part 2, Nederland hopes that uncovering the truth of the events on Mars in 2248 will help to bring down the repressive Committee. He wrestles with the knowledge that his ability to even attempt this is a result of his personal relationship with a powerful politician. He is compromised, even as he pursues the truth as he sees it.

This is my truth tell me yours

Jo Walton described Part 2 as “a strange dance of despair”, about how history is something we “constantly revise and reimagine”. On one level, this is a struggle between Nederland and the state. The evidence that Nederland uncovers of the Committee’s war crimes is simply absorbed by them, weaved into a narrative over which they retain control. As the book puts it, “your victories are sucked in and used just as efficiently as your defeats."

On a smaller scale, it is the history of people’s own lives which are being reimagined. In Robinson’s version of human longevity, a person can live for several hundred years but can remember only 80 or 90. The writing of journals becomes widespread, as people feel a need to document their own lives. 

In Part 3, Edmund Doya comes to believe that he has finally explained the structure on Pluto and accuses the person he believes to be the guilty party. His knowledge of what may be the truth is dwarfed by their enormous wealth and power. Like revolutionary change, in Icehenge truth is something that characters seek obsessively, at great personal risk, and little confidence of success - and yet, there is hope.

Older and wiser?

Robinson movingly describes the potential social and personal effects of extreme human longevity. When at one point Nederland is addressed by name by a stranger, he assumes she is familiar with his work. She turns out to be his 60-year old grand-daughter, whom he has never previously met. Despite the restrictions on procreation, a 300-year old has more living descendents than they can, or wish to, keep track of.

A longer life also gives people a greater stake in and responsibility for the future, for better or worse. As Nederland puts it in a moment of frustration, "...now we're all going to live a thousand years and we are going to have to live in the system we make, for year after year beyond our ability to imagine." No longer can people ignore problems, leaving them to future generations to figure out. Greatly increased life spans would mean that the future would be something everyone would genuinely have to confront. Would this shift help today’s societies confront their seemingly insoluble threats, not least climate breakdown?

The struggle for meaning

The desire for revolution, searches for truth, and extended lifespans in Icehenge all shed light on what is arguably Robinson’s principal theme - the struggle for meaning. All of his characters search for meaning not only in the abstract mysteries of the icehenge itself, but also in the equally confusing realities of their own long lives. All too often, they are frustrated by political machinations, personal frailties, and the base strangeness of the universe and life itself. Robinson’s often poetic prose brings these searches to vivid life. This is humane and thoughtful SF, and an underrated part of the author’s early career.

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• The first edition of Icehenge was a paperback published by Avon in October 1984. I read the 1997 Voyager edition.
  
• A Tor Essentials edition of the novel was published in 2024, with an introduction by Henry Farrell. Robinson was interviewed at length by Farrell about the writing of Icehenge.
  
• An earlier version of part 3 of the novel was published as At the North Pole of Pluto in Orbit 18 (1980) edited by Damon Knight. This story was the final entry in the final Orbit anthology. In November 1982, an earlier version of part 1 was published as To Leave a Mark in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, or F&SF.
  
• The book was to some extent modelled on The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972) by Gene Wolfe, which also comprises three linked novellas and deals with competing narratives about the deep past of a human colony.
  
• Icehenge has a number of similarities with Robinson's later Mars trilogy (1993 - 1996). These include revolutionary movements on the red planet, the author's love of hiking and landscapes, and the development of life extension treatments.