"Magnificent Desolation"

If -?- a Martian colony is founded soon, then contemporary novelists will be able to refer to current interplanetary flights and to characters living on Mars as well as on Earth. Extraordinary.

Might someone now write a near-future novel which, a decade hence, will be indistinguishable from a contemporary novel? No, because even the near future never resembles our anticipations. We expected regular interplanetary flight after the first few Moon landings.

When describing lunar surface excursions, sf writers can draw on the experiences of Apollo astronauts. In Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2, Jesse Nicol sees:

the "...blue-and-white marbled glory..." (p. 42) of Earth overhead;

 a shadowed crater floor;

a peak "...crowned with stars..." (p. 41);

massive heights gently contoured by "...millennial cosmic infall..." (pp. 41-42);

hoarfrost-like meteorite splash;

mountains on the horizon.

 

He also sees the works of man:

 

gleaming radio masts;

bright monorails;

domes and hemicylinders at road junctures;

microwave dishes transmitting energy to Earth;

other ubiquitous artifacts;

the orbiting Habitat with shining solar sails.

 

Looking again at the moonscape, he thinks:

 

"Magnificent desolation..." (p. 44)

 

The phrase is not printed in inverted commas but we recognize it. I remember Aldrin saying it. And Nicol, a frustrated poet, reflects:

 

"What a wonderful phrase. And not from a poet; from a perfectly straightforward Apollo astronaut, centuries and centuries ago, blurted forth when first he espied this realm. The time had been right, the achievement happening, the man in and of it; and so the words came, not after struggle and soul-search but as if by themselves." (p. 44)

 

An excellent incorporation of Aldrin's two words into a novel. Nicol immediately follows this with a prayer, not addressed to a literal deity but expressive of his aspiration:

 

"O daughter of Zeus, howsoever you know of these matters, tell me." (ibid.)