Planning a trip to the planet Mars
The NASA
aquanauts
are dipping
down, diving
through waves
of Florida-blue,
landing seal-sleek
and flipper-footed
on their barnacled
Reef Base.
Water-walkers,
free-flyers,
coral-constructors,
transplanting, nurturing,
exploring the sea’s
inner space and time’s
outer limits, video
linking with a countdown
of fifteen minutes
between hello,
how are you?
and hello to you,
friend, here
with me
on the red planet
of lost rivers
two hundred
million miles
adrift from
the ocean’s
salty mirror
Illustration for Ray' Bradbury's Martian Chronicles -- Michael Whelan
In 1950 Ray Bradbury collected a number of short stories he had published between 1946 and 1949 and added some new tales into "The martian Chronicles," what he called a "half-cousin to a novel" and "a book of stories pretending to be a novel." It detailed the daily lives of the planet's inhabitants, their displacement by colonists from Earth, and the daily lives of the "new" Martians.
ReplyDelete"They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.
"Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.
"Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room....
"And then it happened.
"There was a warmth as of a great fire passing in the air. A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal.
"Ylla cried out.
"Running through the pillars, she flung wide a door. She faced the hills. But by this time there was nothing."