... and Mars will be gone

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on the flank of "Husband Hill", April 2005.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

We’ll all go on and make Mars safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it’s some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we’ll be here, and we’ll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.


Kim Stanley Robinson [Red Mars, 1993]