Point
We Should Colonize Mars
By: Arthur Von Clarksburg
Space is the final frontier. Much has been said about our distant horizon, the great manifest destiny of man, in and of itself, and which to, becoming of our most eminent origins, we must propel ourselves towards henceforth. In the light of innovation hitherto underutilized, we must not falter, must not waver in our undying resolve, that we should take to the skies and place our domiciles upon our red brother, that he may know the beauty and glory of mankind.
For in our shell, we may be complacent, but complacency is the mother of sloth, and sloth the mother of nefarious ways. Without boundless imagination, we tether ourselves to the limits of our known world and cease to become what we were destined to be: explorers in the ne’er-before-traversed void, fearing nothing but boredom, seeking nothing but discovery.
Therefore, I decree that it is our interest, nay, our duty, nay, our right, to claim the uninhabited world Mars for our own, and to raise a civilization upon its desolate and untenable soil that will rival the Pax Romana in tranquility and renown.
Counterpoint
Post-Colonial Literature Is Terrible
By: Rubicon Tessanagh
My esteemed colleague and noted abuser of the English language, Professor Von Clarksburg, seems to be laboring under the illusion that there will only be a fantasia of exploration and discovery upon the colonization of Mars. I daresay he has read some of the postcolonial literature produced upon Earth, such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and if I may, in the crudest sense, declare them to be atrocious, and strongly derivative. The mere title of Achebe’s “masterpiece” is merely a statement of the obvious, echoed by the first Neanderthal who was divorced.
Do we truly want to subject our future generations to endless droning literature that repeats an obvious statement as the call of a bird? Imagine works on the plight of Martian rocks, as the boots of the oppressor crush them underfoot. The utter banality of such a premise is something that I believe the world should be saved from. And for the love of God, concluding a novel with metaphorical suicide should be a criminal offense. Thus, in order to preserve the elite literary intelligentsia who actually have the leisure and desire to read such works from severe nausea, I strongly urge the leaders of our planet to cancel any and all plans to colonize space in the near future.
Well, of course, unless people want to write literature about noble Earthlings who raise Mars from its savage origins to a beacon of civilized society. That sounds like a breath of fresh air.