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Fanfare, v. 1, issue 4, October 1940
Page 4
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OUTSIDE by Jack Chapman Miske If one sits alone and attempst [sic] to realize the full enormity of it, the conception of tiny Earth rolling through the alien vastness of the universe is a truly fearful one. We are all familiar with the conventional difficulties besetting the men who work toward space flight; but too little has been written of what may be the most obstinate problem of all to overcome. Rocket fuels, food problems, cosmic radiations, meteors, takeoff facilities,--these are all problems the ingenuity of man can overcome. But what of the mental angle? The romantic fantasy magazines have dealt altogether too casually with it, for the sake of storytelling. In them, the first space traveler steps from his ship and is immediately at home. I doubt that traditional situation. Let us attempt to put ourselves in the place of that first space voyager. We have successfully faced the gulf of space. The months of weary rocketing through the void are ended. Mars is spinning up beneath us, and we are fortunate in being able to land safely. The realization of our predicament looms up in all its frightening, incredible reality. Earth, our friends, all that we have ever known are represented in the glow of a pale blue star floating overhead. We donned spacesuits for the landing, so now we merely enter the airlock and in a moment are standing on the red soil of Mars. First of men to feel the hardness of an alien world beneath our feet! It is nearly sunset. The shadow of our ship lies long on the desert wastelands of Mars. We stand there dwarfed by the curve of an unearthly sky, deep blue with the stars already shining through. The sun sinks lower, half-beneath the horizon. The Martian night is very near. The sky deepens, the stars flame more brightly. The cold whispers of Martian winds whistle dryly through the ruins of a long-crumbled Martian city not far distant, then rustle strangely about our ship and our own silent, motionless figures. The whole weight of the alien world presses on you. You feel it everywhere: you are outside, outside the laws and cultures of man and past are more real than the hills and streams of Earth. Every side is alien, nowhere can you turn to anything familiar. The loneliness you often experienced on Earth when alone in a country house or in a deep forest is with you again, magnified by untold millions of miles of empty space. Billions of animate creatures have lived and died on this world, and they are gone. Only you are there, and you are incredibly alien--for you are...Outside! That should in some small measure indicate what I mean. Will it be possible for anyone to live for any length of time under such circumstances? It will be not merely a matter of homesickness, but of being entirely misplaced in space--Outside... I don't think the human mind can appreciate the utter alienness of the intelligence of another-world dweller. It is almost certain it would be so different that his mind would be of a pattern perhaps entirely incomprehensible to us, and vice-versa. There might be no ground
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OUTSIDE by Jack Chapman Miske If one sits alone and attempst [sic] to realize the full enormity of it, the conception of tiny Earth rolling through the alien vastness of the universe is a truly fearful one. We are all familiar with the conventional difficulties besetting the men who work toward space flight; but too little has been written of what may be the most obstinate problem of all to overcome. Rocket fuels, food problems, cosmic radiations, meteors, takeoff facilities,--these are all problems the ingenuity of man can overcome. But what of the mental angle? The romantic fantasy magazines have dealt altogether too casually with it, for the sake of storytelling. In them, the first space traveler steps from his ship and is immediately at home. I doubt that traditional situation. Let us attempt to put ourselves in the place of that first space voyager. We have successfully faced the gulf of space. The months of weary rocketing through the void are ended. Mars is spinning up beneath us, and we are fortunate in being able to land safely. The realization of our predicament looms up in all its frightening, incredible reality. Earth, our friends, all that we have ever known are represented in the glow of a pale blue star floating overhead. We donned spacesuits for the landing, so now we merely enter the airlock and in a moment are standing on the red soil of Mars. First of men to feel the hardness of an alien world beneath our feet! It is nearly sunset. The shadow of our ship lies long on the desert wastelands of Mars. We stand there dwarfed by the curve of an unearthly sky, deep blue with the stars already shining through. The sun sinks lower, half-beneath the horizon. The Martian night is very near. The sky deepens, the stars flame more brightly. The cold whispers of Martian winds whistle dryly through the ruins of a long-crumbled Martian city not far distant, then rustle strangely about our ship and our own silent, motionless figures. The whole weight of the alien world presses on you. You feel it everywhere: you are outside, outside the laws and cultures of man and past are more real than the hills and streams of Earth. Every side is alien, nowhere can you turn to anything familiar. The loneliness you often experienced on Earth when alone in a country house or in a deep forest is with you again, magnified by untold millions of miles of empty space. Billions of animate creatures have lived and died on this world, and they are gone. Only you are there, and you are incredibly alien--for you are...Outside! That should in some small measure indicate what I mean. Will it be possible for anyone to live for any length of time under such circumstances? It will be not merely a matter of homesickness, but of being entirely misplaced in space--Outside... I don't think the human mind can appreciate the utter alienness of the intelligence of another-world dweller. It is almost certain it would be so different that his mind would be of a pattern perhaps entirely incomprehensible to us, and vice-versa. There might be no ground
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