Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)
Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.
Indeed, sci fi has always been a way for KSR to explore and animate his politics. But he's so skilled a writer that the spectacle and incredible technical detail of the sci fi wrappings can obscure subtlety of the political philosophy (as it should be, imo).
Agree, except I thought his political views were rather more obvious, to the point that it's a little annoying (IMHO of course). I'd describe it more as hard-left than anarchism, too.
Same. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.
Going off on a huge nerdy tangent but... people think that about anarchism because the violent dystopian image is what you would actually get in most scenarios.
Anarchism is the politics of ignoring game theory. If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is incredibly hard, and that most highly cooperative states are highly unstable. A small number of defectors can easily collapse the whole system back to a more stable tit-for-tat or all-defect state. All-defect states, meanwhile, are often stable.
This probably explains why it took billions of years to get multicellular complex life. It took billions of years for evolution to figure out how to make something that doesn't instantly defect.
It's related to the second law of thermodynamics. An all cooperate state is highly ordered, and thus higher energy and prone to collapsing into a lower energy less ordered state.
A living system that wants to be all-cooperate is going to have to expend huge amounts of energy to maintain that state, which leads me to the final problem with anarchism: most anarchists I've read or met are at least to some degree anti-growth / anti-industry / primitivist types. That math doesn't math. If you want a society where everyone cooperates and is taken care of, that society is going to have huge energy needs, much larger than totalitarian-slum or crime-ridden-hellhole.
I mean, poor people use less energy for starters. Dead people use even less.
The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.). They can create an all-cooperate utopia by using embarrassing amounts of energy to not just police and stamp out defection but render it unnecessary to begin with.
Banks' Culture series is certainly in this vein. In a post-scarcity society not only is there no limits on energy, but there is very little additional benefit to gain from violence to others.
A potential counter to your post would be LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", where a resource-strapped planet-mining society maintains an anarcho-syndicalist society without private ownership, centralised government, or military forces. The likelihood of defection is minimised by firstly the values passed onto younger generations in their education system, and secondly the lack of actual benefit (since few people would follow you and there's not much material wealth or power to gain). Perhaps this is the "other extreme" in which anarchist principles can be explored.
Yes, humanity has used mechanisms like LeGuin’s before. It’s called strict theocracy.
A lot of the anarcho types I’ve met have a blind spot there just like they do with energy. They tend to be social liberals, LGBTQ, etc. and they don’t think about the fact that such societies in real life (not in fiction where the writer is god) tend to be extremely conservative and rigidly traditional. In practice there’s often brutal enforcement too.
The conservatism emerges naturally from the need to strictly maintain the society’s value system to maintain a fragile high cooperation state. Any deviation creates social fragmentation which opens cracks.
I think this is probably why historical civilizations evolved to be so conservative and why social liberalism combined with high trust is a feature of the higher energy industrial cosmopolitan state.
So if you don’t want to live in a strict theocratic state but still want equality, figure out fusion or cheap batteries.
You either overpower entropy with overproduction (cheap energy and cheap stuff) or by finding a cooperative state and then exterminating all deviation from that state with repression and violence.
What about Rojava? Maybe not strict anarchism but not too far off. Definitely not a theocracy or rigidly traditional.
Paris commune, revolutionary Catalonia and Ukrainian free state also spring to mind, though all were bowled over by neighbouring forces.
Catalonia is one I'm familiar with as an example of something a bit like syndicalism working, but it isn't that big and it isn't entirely standing on its own.
These also, as you say, tended to get bowled over eventually.
Try to scale these systems to the whole world and I don't think it would work... not unless you're much closer to post-scarcity.
One thing worth noting is that Anarres in The Dispossessed has a population of only around 20 million. It's not actually that much bigger than revolutionary Catalonia was - maybe 2-3 times the population?
> If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is _incredibly_ hard
I never realized that game theory would give me an answer to that question. You can tell that cooperation at scale is really hard just by observing the discourse around climate change and the necessary steps, as it is something that basically involves everyone. Thanks for the hint!
Climate change is a great example of a horrid game theory problem. Solving it requires an all cooperate pact as long as fossil fuels remain one of the easiest cheapest ways to get power. As long as that’s true, any defector can outcompete everyone in industrial production and creating a higher standard of living.
The other way to beat this is to advance renewable or nuclear power or both to the point that these options are cheaper than fossil fuels, which changes the game by making defection much less profitable.
I personally think that's the only way that's likely to work. As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest easiest route to prosperity, even if the rich world makes (and actually keeps) a climate change pact there's going to be an enormous temptation for developing countries to be like "fuck you, we're poor." Poverty, as in real grinding poverty, really really sucks.
But renewable is already cheaper than fossil fuels. Why don't we see this already?
Renewable PV is the cheapest way generate electricity during daytime at appropriate latitudes.
Notice several caveats: electricity, not heat; daytime, not nighttime; only for some places on the globe.
Most energy use doesn't use electricity. It's one thing to replace an average-16%-efficient internal combustion engine with electricity and another to replace a 96%-efficient condensing boiler.
Solar heating has been a thing for centuries.
By heat I think the parent mostly means industrial process heat, which is mostly supplied by natural gas now. Coal is still used in metallurgy.
Electric heat is rare since it’s inefficient (thermodynamics) and thus expensive but it’s used in applications where you need precision temperature control.
Of course if solar and batteries got cheap enough you could just say F it and use electric resistance heat everywhere. Time your peak production to coincide with mid day when solar is at peak.
> The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.).
Yeah, Marx already had these kind of discussions in the 19th century.
It is very interesting that you arrived to similar conclusions while employing a very different methodology.
Marxism evolved out of a criticism of what they call utopian socialism. Marx realized that socialism could only be build upon the massive development of productivity forces that would lead towards a post scarcity society.
Which is also why actually existing socialism struggled so hard. A revolution is more likely to occur in the least developed parts of the world but that also means it will be one of the hardest places to implement socialism in. Especially while having to defend itself against the rest of the world.
Many Marxists didn't even believe it could be possible to build socialism in such a condition but the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.
The good news is that these days even the least developed parts of the world are vastly more developed than they were in the 19th or 20th century. Modern actually existing socialism will look vastly different. Plus the rot of the latest stage of capitalism is showing more and more.
So socialism might be closer than we might think.
Not really. Marx didn't know anything about game theory. But he did come up with some adjacent ideas.
> the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.
I think that's giving the USSR way too much credit. Had they had, say, a more boring democratic revolution and joined social democratic Europe they'd have done a whole lot better.
That's a very confused reading of thermodynamics, and going from stability landscapes to political systems to literal energy consumption is not a credible leap.
The real problem is psychology, not energy. As soon as you get one predatory narcissist/sociopath in a culture, and they're allowed to act freely, they will, with absolute inevitability, take advantage of everyone else's trust and cooperation and destroy any culture of mutual good will.
Energy is irrelevant to this. It will happen at any level of technology.
That leap reminds me of the Soviet Unions official ideology/non-religion “Dialectical Materialism”. It had the goal of explaining everything in the world, from the dynamics of atoms to the global communist revolution, with one common logic. To make it sound like the ideology of the system was based on the rules of nature itself.
Which sci-fi series give proper anarchist culture a shot, other than the Mars trilogy?
Becky Chambers work, Ursula LeGuin's work (particularly The Dispossessed), The Culture series by Banks, Murderbot by Wells.
I am into Banks but have not thought of Culture as anarchist, interesting!
Not sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it.
I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.
Isn't that dangerous, to write about a fictional society that works while being based on ideas that don't work in real life?
While you’re at it call Netflix and tell them that marrying a European prince at Christmas isn’t a viable option for most big city career girls. Fiction must be realistic at all times with no idealism or escapism, got it.
While accepting that freedom of expression is important I just wouldn't recommend anti-capitalist fiction. Against totalitarism seems better.
The goal of the fictional societies is to explore what they could be and to challenge existing ideas.
I'd suggest giving https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130 a read.
Didn't seem to stop Ayn Rand? - To be clear I wouldn't want to either KSR or Rand publishing anything they wanted!
Oops = I missed "stop" out of that comment!
This post neatly encapsulates the phrase "It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism".
There are varying degrees of capitalism, right? If someone thinks it's unfair that his boss earns 100% more than him, then maybe 50, or 25% or even 10% would be fair? Trying to flip an imperfect system upside down doesn't seem right to me.
Modern Western economies generally incorporate a mixture of capitalist and socialist principles. On one hand we have private ownership and capital accumulation, on the other we have universal healthcare, free education, some form of welfare, etc... . You could argue that this is simply "regulated capitalism" but I think it's more accurate to see it as a balance of distinct economic ideals.
My original post was in response to your statement "ideas that don't work in real life". Excepting the fact that anarchist principles are functioning tolerably well in some places such as Rojava; I believe we ought to continually ask ourselves whether the capitalistic appeal to greed and competition is relevant as our social structures and technology evolves. The fact that left-wing revolutions led to authoritarian rule in Russia, China and other countries doesn't refute that we can eventually rid ourselves of that blight.
I have a popup saying "terraforming complete" after 10 sols, but I want to keep playing and I cannot dismiss that popup.
The game is definitely fun but there's some papercuts that make it tough: no dismantle I can find, placement is difficult to understand.
Some feedback:
Colonists are really tough to talk to - you have to be in just the right spot.
There doesn't seem to be a downside to spamming buildings if you can afford it. There needs to be some ongoing cost to everything you place OR a downside.
Music shouldn't change in menus, or at least shouldn't restart constantly. That gets a bit annoying.
EDIT: Looks like these were almost all fixed, awesome.
I'd say there's a few QoL improvements you could make:
- The building choice for a colonist could probably just be a type of building, otherwise you're scrolling through 90+ buildings
- Add key repeat for scrolling long lists
- Draw a rectangle for the building footprint you're about to build to help position, allow mouse placement to shift it around if you need
- Maybe consider re-selecting the same building type because building an array of buildings requires a lot of keys (or a hotkey per building type?)
- Lists should probably wrap around too
This is so cool. How are you going to simulate Michel's longing for Provence? Seriously though I adore the trilogy. I started a Mars storymapping project which incorporated Underhill, Senzeni Na, the Moholes etc. a little while back too:
It’s BYO longing for Provence.
But it's got to be specifically Provence, or else it's just sparkling homesickness?
oh yeah, absolutely
wow i absolutely LOVE this. what an awesome resource for readers. and TBD on longing for Provence... maybe v2 of the game will include a space elevator...
If I go near a building, like a solar panel and press E then I get the information status, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and get a menu [Destroy]/Cancel, press E and the building get destroyed!
Important feature request: When I reach the menu, the default action must be "cancel" in case the user is pressing E without reading the messages.
Same thing on mobile, just immediately destroyed the thing I just built :D
I visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon.
It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow!
By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?
Thanks for giving it a click! Let me know how it goes on desktop. Actively trying to improve the phone experience now...
Loud music warning for those wearing headphones.
You weren't exaggerating! I didn't even have headphones on, and it scared the sh*t out of me when I clicked on the little man.
The music was so loud from my monitor's speakers that I nearly jumped out of my skin and rushed to close it, and my volume isn't even turned up much!
Yeah, it's more horrifying than the premise - despite it being good, it's loud as hell
The 'mute' button is near the top-right, the leftmost option of the little rectangles ~80% from the top
It's a must-click if you're loading the site with sound - it would be great if OP would add a very obvious volume slider on load
sorry folks, the music should start at a much lower volume now....
Very cool! A couple notes from my first few sols:
- I had a really hard time building a greenhouse, because I hadn't realized it'd be bigger than 1 square like all the previous buildings, and it just wouldn't build despite having materials etc. Maybe a footprint outline while hovering a build option?
- There were a lot of instructions from Dr. Kimura right off the bat. Hard for me to remember all that, and I was hoping talking to the doc again would replay those hints.
- My population seems to be stuck at 2.. I have landing pads and habitats and plenty of food etc, but don't really know what I should be doing next.
- that menus continue beyond the first couple lines was not obvious to me. Possibly because I'm on laptop, so the existing hint was way far to the right
Got it, thanks for all this. There seems to be a bit of a bug with new colonists arriving so trying to fix that now. And agreed on your other points as well.
Played for a bit, liked the aesthetics so I bookmarked it to come back to it later and discovered a bug. On mac/chrome, I hit CMD + D to bookmark. By doing so, I setup some kind of autowalk bug where I kept walking to the right. I couldn't stop myself from walking, even pressing WAS temporarily stopped me but as soon as I let go, I kept walking right.
Thanks for this, I'll address it now.
Terraforming Mars is a board game that heavily references these novels which i highly recommend.
It’s great but really needs the expansions, don’t play without
Got power water and o2 but can’t seem to scroll the list of items to build for food on Firefox/iOS (should also be Safari/iOS) since it selects on tap before the scroll.
Another person just mentioned this to me, looking into it.
Wow, the mobile experience is great!
Really like the feel of the game.
FWIW, I have added this to the HN Arcade https://hnarcade.com/games/games/underhill
Thank you!!
Hmm, I just get a black screen on my iPhone when I click your link.
Did you use any existing stuff like the mars-sim project? https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/
Try it now! And no I didn't but that is very cool.
Much better, now it opens up the game. Is this open source?
I hope you did most of it in AI. I pasted your post verbatim into Claude free (except changed "I built" to "Build" and it made a similar looking game that seems to work on the first try.https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7420f435-3d5f-4b33-bb43-d...
It is hard to understand and play... maybe make it more obvious. I made a solar panel, it says I should assign staff...
I would love to play if it would work. And music, thank god for the mute button.
are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.
I think on mobile it’s natural to walk to the guy and tap on him. Not helped by the fact that the screen shows ‘tap’ over the highlighted tile, which does nothing. You need to walk and position the guy under your cursor, then press ‘act’.
The position yourself, then long press on ‘act’ to build when you can’t see where to put the building anymore is pretty awkward too. I’d expect to click to build, position it, then press confirm or reject or something.
When the mars space elevator was brought down and wrapped around mars TWICE was one of the most memorable moments of any book I've ever read.
Spoilers! But yeah, that was a memorable scene.
With old obscure books like this spoilers can be strategic to entice people to actually read them.
This is one of my favourite book series ever; it has so many points for learning and humanity. Thanks for making this!
Thank you for checking it out!
Hey it looks cool but for some reasons I cant play it? Is it because I use brave browser?
Tried briefly with Firefox here, and I think it's just a game that starts out incredibly slowly.
As in, it needs to go through the whole "What is your name? ____" type of sequence first before any of the WASD/arrow keys actually do anything, even if the instructions earlier on give the impression they should be functional right away.
I could only get two colonists to come. I built a ton of every structure I was able to, housing, landing pad, energy, water, O2, and greenhouses and still only two came. Perhaps a bug?
Working on this. Thanks for clicking!
It’s not really clear how it’s played.
Thanks for trying it out. Can you say more? Was it the controls or more about what you're supposed to build/do first?
Both. It was the controls at first, I didn’t realize you had to press “E” or “Enter” to progress the dialog. Then I tried clicking the mouse and moving the cursor. Then once I figured out how to advance the dialog and move around, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. The top left bars were blinking as if I needed to interact or do something with them. I eventually figured it out, but it was confusing to start off with.
I am on Firefox and it does nothing, no movement, just flashing resource monitors with zero values...
Made me think of this gem:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultima-worlds-of-adventur...
dear god make the music quiet by default
I must have missed something because my HP keeps ticking down until I pass out and get warped back to the command center. Eating food and resting do not seem to change the situation.
I really enjoyed my first few Sols. Good work! How did you build it? How long did it take? Will it make money?
You could also do a version of this for the KSR novel "Antarctica", which is effectively "White Mars". ;-)
Great, how did you build it? Also I have to read the books
vanilla JS and canvas plus a hefty bit of technical help from Claude.
It seems you draw everything every frame onto the canvas? The result is quite GPU heavy, for your next game I would recommend looking into a graphic libary like pixijs, to make use of the webgl/webgpu .. then it would run smooth even on old mobile phones.
check out raylib, it should be amazing for this :)
Is hard to talk to the engineer, I can't select him, stuck between the base and a solar panel.
Do you have permission from the publisher for an adaptation? If not, you're taking a legal risk basing it off the books.
It's based on it, it's not an adaptation.
Also, this would very well fit within fair use
It would not fit within the definition of fair use. Lack of commercial revenue isn't some escape hatch.
OTOH, if it were merely inspired by it (but not an adaptation) then there would be no copyright issues.
That does not match my understanding of fair use at all.
Feels really laggy on desktop. Tried both Firefox and Brave. Like 3-4 FPS
I'm on mobile (Android, Brave), and I can do everything but interact with the people. Am I doing something wrong?
Oh and I can't scroll down on the hq menu. The engineer guy only spoke to me after 15 mins
Had 1000 of each resource, lots of income, landing pads and habitats, but never got more colonists?
Same, I'm stuck at 18 inhabitants.
I'm stuck at 0 lol
I'm full HP and hunger and slept - why is the character now walking so slowly?
Interesting game, love the design.
Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.
are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.
Dvorak support/autodetection would be nice.
Well, here we are!
i'd prefer to live in a game where i could sleep during the day too..
wp btw
I love it! thanks for sharing.
Thanks for clicking!
Surviving Mars (2018) is another really good game in this category.
Agreed, very nice. Turns out the whole game is written in Lua (minus rendering and such I assume). The source is fully readable, I was amazed how high-level that code was. Writing mods was ridiculously easy.
Awesome work love it