Tags: rock

A few years ago, I wrote about how much I enjoyed the book Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Not everyone liked that book. A lot of people were put off by its structure, in which the dream of interstellar colonisation meets the harsh truth of reality and the book follows where that leads. It pours cold water over the very idea of humanity becoming interplanetary.

But our own solar system is doable, right? I mean, Kim Stanley Robinson is the guy who wrote the Mars trilogy and 2312, both of which depict solar system colonisation in just a few centuries.

I wonder if the author might regret the way that some have taken his Mars trilogy as a sort of manual, Torment Nexus style. Kim Stanley Robinson is very much concerned with this planet in this time period, but others use his work to do the opposite.

But the backlash to Mars has begun.

Maciej wrote Why Not Mars:

The goal of this essay is to persuade you that we shouldn’t send human beings to Mars, at least not anytime soon. Landing on Mars with existing technology would be a destructive, wasteful stunt whose only legacy would be to ruin the greatest natural history experiment in the Solar System. It would no more open a new era of spaceflight than a Phoenician sailor crossing the Atlantic in 500 B.C. would have opened up the New World. And it wouldn’t even be that much fun.

Manu Saadia is writing a book about humanity in space, and he has a corresponding newsletter called Against Mars: Space Colonization and its Discontents:

What if space colonization was merely science-fiction, a narrative, or rather a meta-narrative, a myth, an ideology like any other? And therefore, how and why did it catch on? What is so special and so urgent about space colonization that countless scientists, engineers, government officials, billionaire oligarchs and indeed, entire nations, have committed work, ingenuity and treasure to make it a reality.

What if, and hear me out, space colonization was all bullshit?

I mean that quite literally. No hyperbole. Once you peer under the hood, or the nose, of the rocket ship, you encounter a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ghoulish garbage.

Two years ago, Shannon Stirone went into the details of why Mars Is a Hellhole

The central thing about Mars is that it is not Earth, not even close. In fact, the only things our planet and Mars really have in common is that both are rocky planets with some water ice and both have robots (and Mars doesn’t even have that many).

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the case for Mars colonisation is that its most ardent advocate turns out to be an idiotic small-minded eugenicist who can’t even run a social media company, much less a crewed expedition to another planet.

But let’s be clear: we’re talking here about the proposition of sending humans to Mars—ugly bags of mostly water that probably wouldn’t survive. Robots and other uncrewed missions in our solar system …more of that, please!

Two weeks ago I was on stage for two days hosting Leading Design in London.

Last week I was on stage for two days hosting Clarity in New Orleans.

It was an honour and a pleasure to MC at both events. Hard work, but very, very rewarding. And people seemed to like the cut of my jib, so that’s good.

With my obligations fulfilled, I’m now taking some time off before diving back into some exciting events-related work (he said, teasingly).

Jessica and I left New Orleans for Florida on the weekend. We’re spending a week at the beach house in Saint Augustine, doing all the usual Floridian activities: getting in the ocean, eating shrimp, sitting around doing nothing, that kind of thing.

But last night we got to experience something very unusual indeed.

We stayed up late, fighting off tiredness until strolling down to the beach sometime after 1am.

It was a mild night. I was in shorts and short sleeves, standing on the sand with the waves crashing, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness.

We were looking to the south. That’s where Cape Canaveral is, about a hundred miles away.

A hundred miles is quite a distance, and it was a cloudy night, so I wasn’t sure whether we’d be able to see anything. But when the time came, shortly before 2am, there was no mistaking it.

An orange glow appeared on the ocean, just over the horizon. Then an intense bright orange-red flame burst upwards. Even at this considerable distance, it was remarkably piercing.

It quickly travelled upwards, in an almost shaky trajectory, until entering the clouds.

And that was it. Brief, but unforgettable. We had seen the launch of Artemis 1 on the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever launched.

I’m standing in an art gallery, looking at a painting. There’s a lump in my throat and a slight moistness to my eyes.

I’m at a concert, listening to a song. There’s a lump in my throat and a slight moistness to my eyes.

Looking at the painting reminded me of the song.

I was in Washington DC for An Event Apart. The art gallery in question was the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I went along to the Normal Rockwell exhibition that’s currently on show there.

The pictures are from the private collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. They are fitting custodians of Rockwell’s legacy. As filmmakers, they excel at creating works that are somewhat schlocky, manipulative and commercial, all while being undeniably effective. That sums up the work of Norman Rockwell.

Don’t take that as a criticism. I enjoy the transparently manipulative paintings of Rockwell as much as I enjoy the transparently manipulative films of Spielberg.

The collection on display in DC is exceptional. You would need a heart of stone not to smile at some point whilst perusing the paintings.

I’m standing in an art gallery, looking at a painting.

The painting is called Good Boy (Little Orphan at the Train). Every face in the picture tells its own story. A nun stands on a train platform, a little boy in her hands. Also on the platform, a well-to-do woman waits with some trepidation to take the boy. From the windows of the train’s carriage, more young children look on expectantly.

It’s a scene from a social experiment: the orphan trains:

The orphan trains ran between 1854 and 1929, relocating an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. At the time the orphan train movement began, it was estimated that 30,000 vagrant children were living on the streets of New York City.

They would typically arrive in a town where local community leaders had assembled interested townspeople. The townspeople would inspect the children and after brief interviews with the ones they wanted, take them home. After a trial period, some children became indentured servants to their host families, while most were adopted, formally or informally, as family members.

I’m at a concert, listening to a song.

I hadn’t heard of the orphan trains until I went to see Jim Roll playing a concert upstairs in The Prince Albert pub in Brighton. He spoke about his own grandfather, who was one of the orphans who travelled on a train from New York. Although he found a home with foster parents, his place in the family was never assured.

The song is called Eddie Rode The Orphan Train and it was later covered by Jason Ringenberg of Jason And The Scorchers fame.

Eddie rode the orphan train from Soho down to Arkansas and every stop along the way they promised him a rubber ball.

Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg runs from June 2nd until January 2nd at the American Art Museum.

The album Inhabiting The Ball by Jim Roll is available from Amazon.

There’s a lump in my throat and a slight moistness to my eyes.