lundi 30 avril 2012

DA VINCI : why this name ?

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For those who haven't read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), I must explain "Da Vinci", the name of this blog.
In Red Mars (the first book), when humans settle on Mars by 2026, they build stations and then, entire cities. Among these places is "Da Vinci", working base for an ambitious community of scientists innovating in very different areas such as agriculture, terraforming, weaponry and medecine.
Of course, "Da Vinci" refers to Leonardo Da Vinci, scientist, engineer and extremely polyvalent artist of the Renaissance who studied and practiced painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, weather, astronomy, military engineering, religious art, philosophy... The Renaissance definitely inspired KSR to express the pioneer spirit that Mars settlers felt in front of the infinite potential of this new world.
In the books, Da Vinci is a planetary laboratory and also an efficient productive place. In the Mars trilogy, it will develop the longevity treatment (that doubles or triples life span), provide weapons for the first martian revolution (2061), humus for the green part of the terraforming effort, and thousands of oxygen masks for the refugees of Burroughs, the capital town flooded and destroyed during the second revolution (2127).
I then called my blog "Da Vinci" as a tribute to this conceptual and technical creativity that the human-settlement on Mars requires.

For more about the Da Vinci lab, visit the Da Vinci page of MangalaWiki, a rich database on the Mars trilogy (and other books by KSR), linked to the news site KimStanleyRobinson.Info.

I'll end with a word on the roundel here above. It's a creation of mine. A symbol of the 3 stages of Mars in terraforming : Red, Green, Blue (as the 3 books of the trilogy).

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