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Posts Tagged ‘trip to Mars’

I may have a Mars hangover,* so today it’s… drum roll please… Free Fiction Day! Wherein I source high-quality fiction for your perusing pleasure. It’s Friday and I am looking forward to the weekend, so today’s installment is this recent little gem from the good folks over at Daily Science Fiction: 

Onboarding Practices for the Ravaging Horde

When ravaging, it is important that you work hard to create a suitably terrifying experience for the peasant farmers of the indolent lands of Gresh. Best practices include clearly establishing client expectations in an orderly and timely manner, particularly for any projects with cyclical processes such as the burning of seasonal crops, the dismaying of children’s birthday parties, or the poisoning of wells.

— Daily Science Fiction :: Onboarding Practices for the Ravaging Horde by E. B. Brandon

Aren’t you glad you don’t work for that guy? (At least, I hope you don’t!)

Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

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* Way to go, Perseverance! And yes, we watched The Martian last night. Still fun, and I had the added enjoyment of measuring the distance between where we are now and the movie world. It’s also interesting to consider the fact that (as far as I know) there’s really nothing stopping private citizens from going to Mars themselves. Aside from an ocean of money, which we’ve oh so helpfully given to space-geeks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Will the first human on Mars plant an Amazon flag? Drive a Tesla rover? Claim (ahem) prime real estate and start building oversized warehouses, then charge the rest of us entrance fees? Disturbing thoughts!

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Planet boredom
On Mars I learned that boredom has two sides – it can either rot the mind or rocket it to new places…

This essay provides a fascinating look at the HI-SEAS (Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) Mars training mission from the inside. Written by Kate Greene, a science and technology journalist (i.e. not an astronaut), the piece gives a great inside look at what a trip to Mars might be like. For speculative fiction writers, this sort of research provides terrific insight into what life in space would actually feel like to those living it.

Short answer? Boring. Longer answer? Sometimes boring can be a good thing…

Find the full essay at aeon Magazine. For more on the pitfalls of life on Mars, you could also check out Andy Weir’s recent novel The Martian.

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