Friday 24 November 2017

Ganymede

Mountains like teeth;

craters like fortress walls;

long crater shadows on blue-gray plains;

the John Glenn range;

Berkeley Ice Field, sheening amber;

Mare Navium;

Dante Chasm;

the Red Mountains;

the green beacon at Aurora;

rock and ice;

Jupiter above;

unblinking stars in a black sky.

This is how the colonized Ganymede looks to the pilot of a returning moonship on pp. 7-9 of Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer. He thinks of it as home but I would not like to live there.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, life will be, at least for a shorter or longer time, hard, austere, dangerous for any colonies founded on Mars or Ganymede. But, were I young enough and able to do so, I would at least hope I would join such a colony. Space and other worlds besides Earth is where the true future of mankind lies. We would have ROOM for new and different societies to arise, to discover new opportunities and hopes. To no longer be hemmed in and crampingly caged on this single little globe!

Sean