2019-07-22

WWSotM: Space

"Space, is big..." says The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then it goes on to give some stunningly bad advice about holding a lungful of air in order to survive in a vacuum.  DO NOT DO THIS...

If you ever find yourself needing to walk out an airlock without a spacesuit then you must let all the air out, no matter where in your body it is: lungs, ears or digestive tract.  Otherwise parts of you may burst.

Then, also, just try to (a) be quick and (b) have a bit of cloth or something for grabbing the metal handle of the other airlock; and you may be fine...  If you grab metal in space with unprotected fingers then you may freeze or burn them, depending whether the metal is facing the Sun or not.

Anyway, that is that, and this is a poem about a coffee table.









Space


Between my two raised hands
I show just how much width
the coffee table takes
and that is space

not a huge amount of it
something approaching three foot six
but the same stuff
that separates us from the Moon.


You're on the far side
of the coffee table now;
no matter how I manoeuvre
I can't bring you close...

...you say you need more space;
beyond you is the window,
kites flying in the park,
and beyond that, the Sun.




2019-07-21

WWSotM: The Red Planet Blues

David Bowie never toured Mars [citation needed]...

Edgar Rice Burroughs sent John Carter to Mars several times, but due to time-skew John landed on a fictionalized planet where the women were strangely attractive...

Curiosity landed on the real Mars, or rather Curiosity landed on a Mars that is inhabited only by machines.  This Mars will cease to exist the moment a human sets foot on it.

However, to this day, no human has ever set foot on Mars.  There are good reasons for that.  One is that that human would probably not be coming back, another is that even getting there alive is really hard [citation needed].

It would also be very expensive, and you might say we have better things to spend our money on...  However, as long as we are limited only to Earth, we're vulnerable.  One decent sized rock falling out of the the sky and it is all over.

We're not quite ready to colonise Mars yet.

We really should be working on it more.









The Red Planet Blues


Ziggy played guitar,
     jammin' good with Weird and Gilly...


There are no spiders
on Mars, spinning
in bone-cold canyons
to trap unwary space cadets.
There are no great domed cities, shining
pale in the brave red sunset. There are no get
of Edgar Rice Burroughs;
no green, six-limbed warriors
riding thoats or laying eggs
in odd moments
out there in the rusty desert. No Martians for the chronicler
to document their steady decline
after the Earthmen came.

Earthmen must come.
It is necessary.
Pick up the pickaxe.
Start digging a canal.




2019-07-20

WWSotM: That's no moon...

So in 1969 it was a moon.  I'm fairly certain...

If the astronauts had landed on a science fiction moon, I think we would have heard about it almost immediately...







That's no moon...



...that's a science fiction moon.

A science fiction moon is when there is
the tiniest sliver: a line of light,
a curving scar, where someone took
a razor to the sky.

A science fiction moon is when there is
three quarters: an asymmetric lenticulate,
a lens to view much stranger stars
and made by what knows who.

A science fiction moon is when there is
a big bite out of it.

A science fiction moon is precisely half
a moon, a thing that's clearly real and there,
yet also clearly not and gone.

The science fiction moon hangs easy
in my sky tonight, a circle, perfect, full,
impressively large, romantically dead...

...the science fiction moon is ours,
close enough to reach out with one hand and-