Sci-Fi: Blue Mars

(Author's note: to commemorate 10,000 views, I present a two-part series on the terraformed worlds in Sol System.  Feedback always welcome!  Enjoy, and many thanks to all )

    If Mars were discovered today, it would not be colonised or terraformed; rather, it would be overlooked and swiftly forgotten.  However, instead of being found by a burgeoning Diaspora a hundred worlds deep, it was found in the night sky by humanity’s earliest ancestors.  The first world beyond Old Earth’s orbital limit that humanity set foot upon, it was the drive to explore Mars that kicked off the earliest development of the Diaspora Humanarum.  When Mars was first explored, the nature of interplanetary and interstellar travel was still uncertain, and faced with the possibility that Sol System was all humanity would have to itself, Mars was colonised - tentatively at first, and then, following the first waves of colonisation to Luna, aggressively by the space agencies and corporations of Old Earth.

    That Mars was ever terraformed is testament to humanity’s ingenuity and, perhaps, stupidity.  The idea to terraform Mars had circulated since the Fourth Century BD; that it could be realistically attempted was an idea only remotely possible in the Second.  What began as a thought experiment slowly gathered momentum in the 1^st Centuries BD and ADH, and with each stage, investment and development grew while estimates lowered.  Even today, it is not possible to completely terraform Mars.  The atmosphere is too thin, the gravity too slight.  Even with he lowlands flooded and the land colonised by plants and animals imported from Old Earth and gengineered into suitability, Mars remains one of the more extreme worlds of the Diaspora.  While once-barren Tharsis is now entombed in ice, the Mariner Valley is an oasis of life, while the isles of Elysia are forested and green beneath the volcanoes’ glaciated summits.  Most people require breathing assistance on Mars, and the low gravity is very hard to adapt to, with most settlements being gravnetted.  Indeed, the very first synthetic gravity nets were developed to simulate Old Earth’s gravity for the immense domed wildlife sanctuaries built across the Tharsis plateau.  The Tharsis Biodomes helped Old Earth recover from its environmental torment by acting as safe havens for species that ultimately - briefly - became extinct in the wild.

    A great deal of life on Mars is adapted to the low gravity and thin atmosphere, with a high number of species that cannot realistically be grown on other planets.  Extensive gengineering early on in the terraforming process created a high number of unique species, many of which have since become staples across the Diaspora.  As Mars was the first-ever terraforming project, the process of its colonisation and temperance gave humanity a blueprint for colonising other worlds, which was refined once it became clear that worlds like Malinché and Artemis were more common and easier to adapt.  Perhaps the most useful developments to come of the Martian terraforming project were the massive refining of gengineering technique, the development of synthetic gravity, the creation of a number of strains of plant and micro-organism that are now used routinely in terraforming projects across the Diaspora, and the development of multiple terraforming techniques, including the iceberg bombardment most famously used in the terraforming of Venus, the engineered melting of icecaps, and the development of bacteria strains useful in the terraforming process.

    Mars has a fraught history.  Initial colonies in the equatorial craters burgeoned and multiplied as the colonisation and terraforming became more serious and intense.  Squabbles between space agencies and corporations translated into international disagreement on Old Earth, and as Mars became first a colonial frontier and then back yard, humanity colonised the rest of Sol System, starting a similar process on Venus and then - quite by accident - discovering jump points.  Following the collapse of the Terran corporations, governance of Mars passed to the old United Nations, which delegated colonial administration to its more prominent members while it oversaw the overall colonisation of the planet.  The creation of interplanetary colonial empires for the likes of India, China and America was seen as a necessary evil, and saw the transformation of the various enterprises into true colonial territories split along much the same lines as their master countries.  In the early 1^st Century ADH, the granting of Lunar independence saw cries for similar recognition from the Martian colonies, and in 23 ADH, the first native Martian governments were established, effectively partitioning the planet in two.  Arcadia to the northwest and Tharsis to the southeast were created as nominally independent Martian governments that in reality answered to their partner bodies on Old Earth: Arcadia to the Indo-American Entente and International Consortium, and Tharsis to the Union of Asian Republics.

    As Mars warmed and greened all the more, with the atmosphere thickening and water appearing on the surface, Arcadia and Tharsis became locked in a cold war in much the same manner as the international organisations in the First Temperate War across the rest of Sol System.  The conclusion of that conflict, which saw a massive thawing in relations between the blocs of Old Earth and, ultimately, the creation of the United Earth Alliance, at first seemed to present an excuse for the two Martian governments to come together, but ingrained rivalries sent them on continuing different paths, with the result that Mars was only unified following the Jovian War.  A unified government was established in 104 ADH in what was, by then, the city of Renaudot, the former capital of Arcadia and the second-oldest settlement on the planet.  Martian culture is nearly as eclectic as Old Earth’s.  Never able to support the kinds of large population found on other worlds, the Martian population has never exceeded two billion, and holds steady at around 1.2 billion, having done so for most of the past three hundred years.  Dominant elements of Arabian, Japanese, Chinese, Western European and American culture have fused to create a diverse and eclectic society on Mars, with post-Diasporal religions such as Zen Sufism having their roots in Mars' pioneer cultures.  Despite the planet’s chequered past, a hardy, independent spirit has emerged, with the principles of tolerance, civil freedoms, civic duty and respect for the person coming to the fore and serving as one of the Alliance’s proudest member planets.