{"id":16,"date":"2013-05-29T05:18:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T05:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2018-05-07T19:32:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T19:32:49","slug":"write-about-space","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/write-about-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"A-PEOPLE-WITHOUT-A-VISION-PERISH\"<\/a><\/h1>\n
“Ultimately we don’t really want 10,000 people on Mars
\n…we want millions.”<\/span>
\nElon Musk
\n<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Poets should learn with their eyes, the forms of leaves.
\nThey should know how to make people laugh when all are together.
\nThey should go to see what folks are really like.
\nThey should know about oceans and mountains in themselves,
\nand the sun and the moon and the stars.
\nTheir minds should enter into the seasons.
\nThey should go among many people in many places,
\nand learn their languages.
\nKshemendra, 11th century<\/span><\/p>\n

Mars is beautiful, hospitable, inhabitable, fun, adventurous, playful, gorgeous, challenging: home.\u00a0Mars is not virus laden, alien\u00a0supervised, deluged by meteorites,\u00a0shredded by dust-storms,\u00a0or already inhabited by humans and\/or other intelligent lifeforms. Please, enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

No. 1: MARS IS SAFE<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n(These two obscenities shut down Mars movies for over a decade)<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Be original.\u00a0What you create has effect. You can inspire teenagers to study science and foster the next generation of engineers capable of solving any number of issues unrelated to either Mars or space:<\/p>\n

No. 2: SCIENCE IS COOL<\/span><\/div>\n
“I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people<\/span><\/div>\n
in the Boston\u00a0telephone directory than by the two thousand <\/span><\/div>\n
people on\u00a0the faculty of Harvard University.”<\/span><\/div>\n
William Buckley, Jr.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

.
\nMars will be better settled by people selected randomly from anywhere on Earth, with any amount of training, at any station of life, than by the system worms who have ass-kissed their way through the personality cleanser which passes for higher education in America. International Space University, NASA’s Astronaut Candidate Program, these bottlenecks for character will make Mars boring as hell.<\/p>\n

They also make science-fiction boring right now: a fetish for hierarchies and chains of command, a reinforcement of comfortable, predictable, rule-worshiping by-the-book passive personalities — who will not get us anywhere — and an easy-to-write reliance upon danger, threats, and xenophobia — have become staples of science fiction.
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(no green women, thank you)<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Write literature. Write about people. Write about interesting people who happen to live on Mars. Or plan on going there. Or settling it in a Mars to Stay<\/a> mission. Write about\u00a0entrepreneurs who don’t give a damn about NASA, barely remember college, and know how to get things done. Send people who would think it corny to be called astronauts. Make your settlers more interested in painting murals on their hab walls, playing guitar with their children, and understanding Mars than figuring out who isn’t following the manual from Houston. Let Houston’s Starfleet Academy\u00a0worry about an astronaut<\/a> driving cross-country in a diaper to assault the wife of another astronaut with whom she was having an affair.\u00a0We have places to go.
\n.<\/p>\n