In Genesis, the UN appoints Chance Van Riebeck to lead a scientific survey of Mars. Using theories derived from the Gaia Hypothesis, his team clandestinely introduces genetically tailored bacteria into the Martian environment to begin transforming the planet into one habitable by human beings.
Earth is under the theocratic rule of the Ecotheist Movement, which divides human beings from the rest of nature. The Ecotheists regard all human interference with nature as evil; therefore, they consider the transformation of Mars to be a criminal act. So they capture Chance and his followers and put them on trial, which leads to war between the Martian colonists and Earth.
To complete their terraforming project, the colonists must locate the secret Lima Codex, which contains a genetic inventory of all Earthly lifeforms. The Codex is hidden somewhere on Earth, and their agents must hunt it down before the Ecotheists find it first.
The colonists, desperate for independence, threaten to drop a moonlet on the Earth, which would annihilate the planet. To save Earth, the Ecotheists agree to a truce that they have no intention of honoring--for they are plotting a sneak attack that will destroy both the colonists and the Codex.
Genesis is an ambitious tale filled with visionary ideas; peopled with prophets, fanatics, traitors, and tortured heroes; and taut with conflicts that mirror the moral issues we face today.
Originally published in 1988, Genesis was the first major work of fiction that addressed the idea of terraforming Mars. It not only suggested the idea, but provided a feasible solution for doing so. During its initial publication, Genesis was on the list of recommended reading at NASA, and has since gone on to enjoy a type of cult status. Its acknowledged list of admirers includes such literary luminaries as Brian Aldiss, Amy Clampitt, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas M. Disch, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Merrill. It is with great pride that Ilium Press brings this influential and prescient work back into print.
Earth is under the theocratic rule of the Ecotheist Movement, which divides human beings from the rest of nature. The Ecotheists regard all human interference with nature as evil; therefore, they consider the transformation of Mars to be a criminal act. So they capture Chance and his followers and put them on trial, which leads to war between the Martian colonists and Earth.
To complete their terraforming project, the colonists must locate the secret Lima Codex, which contains a genetic inventory of all Earthly lifeforms. The Codex is hidden somewhere on Earth, and their agents must hunt it down before the Ecotheists find it first.
The colonists, desperate for independence, threaten to drop a moonlet on the Earth, which would annihilate the planet. To save Earth, the Ecotheists agree to a truce that they have no intention of honoring--for they are plotting a sneak attack that will destroy both the colonists and the Codex.
Genesis is an ambitious tale filled with visionary ideas; peopled with prophets, fanatics, traitors, and tortured heroes; and taut with conflicts that mirror the moral issues we face today.
Originally published in 1988, Genesis was the first major work of fiction that addressed the idea of terraforming Mars. It not only suggested the idea, but provided a feasible solution for doing so. During its initial publication, Genesis was on the list of recommended reading at NASA, and has since gone on to enjoy a type of cult status. Its acknowledged list of admirers includes such literary luminaries as Brian Aldiss, Amy Clampitt, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas M. Disch, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Merrill. It is with great pride that Ilium Press brings this influential and prescient work back into print.
Praise for Frederick Turner's poetry
"The poem inspires us to go back to the epics of the past, whose roots it shows us to be so much alive after all." - Amy Clampitt
"Vivid, effortless narration ... This is a grand, glowing poem. ... A thousand bravos!" - James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize winning poet
"Frederick Turner comes across in his poems as a man of impressively broad experience, intellectual brilliance, and originality." - Richard Tillinghast
"Myth, religious parable, and science fiction are genetically recombined into lyrical new forms of being. Turner has taken up the most ancient challenges of the poet, delivering work as intellectually charged as formally challenging." - Paul Lake
"Frederick Turner is a polymath as well as a poet and I love his work. I have his extraordinary poem Genesis in a place of honor next to those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton."
- Martyn J. Fogg, President, British Interplanetary Society
"Turner reclaims for poetry its antique privilege of heroic action, its right and, perhaps, primal compulsion to tell a story more sharply, with more economy than can that later idiom which is prose." --George Steiner
"Fluent and full of surprises...its sustained narrative is an enviable achievement..." - Irving Feldman
"...verse narrative of great power." - Guy Davenport
"The epic poem...has historically enjoyed a greater ability to convey a culture's character and spirit through language. Turner uses the strengths of the epic form to good effect. His poems describe and mythologize futures which are more than just extrapolations of our present. He's written good science fiction while creating and presenting a possible future in a way that a novel could not have accomplished. It's good poetry, too." - Dani Zweig
"Vivid, effortless narration ... This is a grand, glowing poem. ... A thousand bravos!" - James Merrill, Pulitzer Prize winning poet
"Frederick Turner comes across in his poems as a man of impressively broad experience, intellectual brilliance, and originality." - Richard Tillinghast
"Myth, religious parable, and science fiction are genetically recombined into lyrical new forms of being. Turner has taken up the most ancient challenges of the poet, delivering work as intellectually charged as formally challenging." - Paul Lake
"Frederick Turner is a polymath as well as a poet and I love his work. I have his extraordinary poem Genesis in a place of honor next to those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton."
- Martyn J. Fogg, President, British Interplanetary Society
"Turner reclaims for poetry its antique privilege of heroic action, its right and, perhaps, primal compulsion to tell a story more sharply, with more economy than can that later idiom which is prose." --George Steiner
"Fluent and full of surprises...its sustained narrative is an enviable achievement..." - Irving Feldman
"...verse narrative of great power." - Guy Davenport
"The epic poem...has historically enjoyed a greater ability to convey a culture's character and spirit through language. Turner uses the strengths of the epic form to good effect. His poems describe and mythologize futures which are more than just extrapolations of our present. He's written good science fiction while creating and presenting a possible future in a way that a novel could not have accomplished. It's good poetry, too." - Dani Zweig
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Frederick Turner is an Oxford graduate and is Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a former editor of The Kenyon Review. He is also the author of ten books of poetry, a novel, and numerous books on literature, philosophy, and classicism, including the controversial The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. Mr. Turner is also the author of The New World, another epic poem published by Ilium Press.
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More About the Author
Frederick Turner is an American poet, polymath and academic. He was born in Northamptonshire, England, in 1943. After spending several years in central Africa, where his parents, the anthropologists Victor W. and Edith L. B. Turner, were conducting field research, Frederick Turner was educated at the University of Oxford (1962-67), where he obtained the degrees of B.A., M.A., and B.Litt. (a terminal degree equivalent to the Ph.D.) in English Language and Literature. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1977. His brother is Robert Turner.
Turner is presently Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, having held academic positions at the University of California at Santa Barbara (assistant professor 1967-72), Kenyon College (associate professor 1972-85), and the University of Exeter in England (visiting professor 1984-85). From 1978-82 he was editor of The Kenyon Review. He has been married since 1966 to Mei Lin Turner (née Chang, a social science periodical editor), and has two sons.
Turner is the author of ten books of poetry, a novel, and numerous books on literature, philosophy, and classicism, including the controversial The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. He has authored a number of scholarly works on topics ranging from beauty and the biological basis of artistic production and appreciation to complexity and Julius Thomas Fraser's umwelt theory of time. Mr. Turner is also the author of two science fiction epic poems, The New World and Genesis.
Turner is presently Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, having held academic positions at the University of California at Santa Barbara (assistant professor 1967-72), Kenyon College (associate professor 1972-85), and the University of Exeter in England (visiting professor 1984-85). From 1978-82 he was editor of The Kenyon Review. He has been married since 1966 to Mei Lin Turner (née Chang, a social science periodical editor), and has two sons.
Turner is the author of ten books of poetry, a novel, and numerous books on literature, philosophy, and classicism, including the controversial The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. He has authored a number of scholarly works on topics ranging from beauty and the biological basis of artistic production and appreciation to complexity and Julius Thomas Fraser's umwelt theory of time. Mr. Turner is also the author of two science fiction epic poems, The New World and Genesis.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great,
By
This review is from: Genesis: An Epic Poem (Paperback)
Epic poetry has lost its place in our culture. The common reader is not interested in the discipline of verse writing, looking more for a simple and easily-accessible series of actions with a bit of descripition thrown in. Turner's "Genesis" is a tribute to Homer, Virgil, the Arthurian tales, "Beowulf", and "the Song of Roland". Turner's story is excellent, narrative and verse techniques wonderful, and characters deep and complex. Anyone interested in epic poetry or science fiction as a genre should read this great work.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A nation-building poem,
By Brendan Frost (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Genesis: An Epic Poem (Paperback)
This is a really bold project---nothing less than a conscious attempt at creating a founders' epic myth for the colonization of Mars. The science fiction was appealing, but the adoption of epic poetic structure to that sturdy narrative style is what raises this to the 5 star level. There is an equal amount of what I would call mysticism, especially as a new prophet for humanity springs from Martian soil. If you ever got excited by reading Virgil, when you had to translate and put yourself back into time, but still wondered what would be the outcome of Aneas' various adventures, this is for you, except it has at its disposal the tools of modern poetry, and is fueled by a genuinely new epic story. The narrative and poetry are perfectly interfused. Turner is somewhat of a throwback, and Genesis could be taken as an apologia for human imperialism on the grand scale. However, he portrays diversity as a real virtue, and also gives the Malthusian intellectual tendency a fair chance to make its case. Humorous subsections of the poetry descend from the lofty rhythm of iambic pentameter into tetrameter, highlighting his contention as a critic that form is central to the understanding of content. The meter is the message, perhaps? This is one of the most moving things I have ever read.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique and beautiful,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Genesis: An Epic Poem (Paperback)
"Genesis" is an epic poem about the terraforming, or environmental transformation, of Mars. It's a beautiful, thoughtful, captivating treatment of a difficult set of environmental, spiritual and political issues. It deserves to be much more widely known than it is, as it ranks with Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles as one of the most moving and unusual literary works about the planet Mars.
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