How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Line)
Quote #1
Interest groups, mircropolitics—they really were fragmenting. One hundred people only, and yet they were too large a community to cohere! And there was nothing [Maya] or Frank could do about it. (2.4.40)
Even on the Ares, deciding where a community begins or ends is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, all of First Hundred makeup a community, but they also have communities within communities within communities.
Quote #2
It was strange how the group was changing again, how the feel of it was changing. [Nadia] could never get a fix on it; the real nature of the group was a thing apart, with a life of its own, somehow distinct from the characters of the individuals that constituted it. (3.4.77)
The themes of community and identity come together in glorious confusion. The community is made up of individual identities, but also seems to exist beyond the individuals that make it up. It's a bit of a tangle.
Quote #3
In a larger society, [Michel] told [Maya], the claustrophobic village atmosphere of Underhill would begin to dissipate; this would give a better perspective on certain aspects of things. (4.2.29)
Ha—no such luck, Michel. If anything, the larger societies popping up on Mars later in the story only cloud perspectives all the more.
Quote #4
[The Swiss] love of country seemed to be expressed by making a certain kind of life: rational, just, prosperous, scientific. They would work for that life anywhere, because to them it was the life that mattered, not a flag or a creed or a set of words, nor even that small rocky patch of land they owned on Earth. The Swiss road-building crew back there was Martian already, having brought the life and left the baggage behind. (5.3.20)
The Swiss represent John Boone's vision of how a Martian community should operate. It's too bad they won't have a flag, though, as we'd like to see what a flag dedicated to science and rationality would look like. A Bunsen Burner in the center, perhaps?
Quote #5
Social planning of some sort… clearly they had to have it. This flailing about without a plan, in violation of even the flimsy plan people had made back at the beginning with the Mars treaty… well, societies without a plan, that was history so far; but history so far had been a nightmare, a huge compendium of examples to be avoided. (5.5.29)
But one could argue that something like the Constitution or Magna Carta can be considered a plan. Why do you think these "plans" don't constitute plans in John's mind? What are they lacking?
Quote #6
"We have studied the old cultures, before your global market netted everything, and in those ages there existed many different forms of exchange. Some of them were based on the giving of gifts." (5.7.100)
One of the key aspects of a community is how we exchange with one another. Giving gifts just because? That's a community we'd like to take for a test-drive.
Quote #7
"There are too many people coming up. You know that. They're not Martian, and they don't care what happens here. They're going to overwhelm us, they're going to overwhelm you. You know that. You're trying to turn them into Martians, we know, but they're coming in a lot faster than you can work." (5.8.79)
The new Martians do have the ability to destroy the community, but it's not like we can live in a community void, can we? A new, different community will take its place. No doubt.
Quote #8
Chalmers nodded. "That's what transnational capitalism means—we're all colonies now. And there's tremendous pressure on us here to alter the treaty so that more of the profits from local mining become the property of transnationals. The developed nations are feeling that very strongly." (6.2.29)
Frank's argument is one of community. Under transnational capitalism, all communities share one distinct definition: colonies. And if there's one definition that most they probably want to avoid, that's it.
Quote #9
"This is understood even by the most conservative elements back home. We will never have civil war, because we are united by our faith."
Frank let his expression alone speak the fact of the Shiite heresy, among many other Islamic "civil wars." (6.3.19-20)
Frank calls into question just how solid any community can be. Changes in ideas, policy, and faith can splinter (if not out and out break) any group of people, from religious communities to sisterhood societies to Friday-night gaming groups.
Quote #10
Some [revolutionaries] hoped to make it to the south polar cap like the prisoners from Korolyov, others had never heard of this refuge; some were Bogdanovists, others were revolutionaries following different leaders; some were religious communes or utopian experiments, or nationalist groups trying to contact their governments back home; and some were merely collections of survivors without a program, orphaned by the violence. (7.4.1)
So you'd think the Martian revolution would make communities easier to spot: revolutionaries to the left, conservatives to the right. But nope. Even among the revolutionaries, communities continue to exist within communities within communities. We're starting to see a pattern here.