Glenn Gaslin's Astonishing Tales of Danger & Wonder

New Habitable Planet Found. So Why Isn't a Guy on His Way Over There Already?

So they find this new place, this 581 c place, this rocky ball only 21 light years away orbiting a tiny cool star at such a distance that liquid water could flow and life could, and let's be honest, probably would get it together and start living. So they find the first such place outside the solar system, the first of what are millions of such places out there.

So now what.

Obviously, learn more about it. The place could be as barren as Mars, which fits the same basic qualifications of "habitable." It could be tidally bound to its sun, as some scientists have speculated, with one face constanly in light and it's water a boiling, vaporing tea, the other face a frozen desert.

Doesn't matter, I say. We're going to keep finding more and more of these places, so let's not waste any time getting them colonized. Let's find a guy, and send him there. There's a guy willing to go, let's get him going. And maybe throw in some other guys, and some chicks. You know, so they can reproduce and keep a minicivilization going on the trip over.

Let's get a program started, the Send a Guy Initiative, let's train 'em and give 'em cell phones and infinitely powered nuke ships and every time we find us a habitable rock ball, send another guy. Stephen Baxter has the same idea in Manifold: Time, of course, only he wants to send a billion guys on every ship, and let them land where they may and spread human life willy nilly. But I'm okay if we start small. A guy or two. To each planet. We'll have us a fleet.

My Reading Drought Ends with Surfing, Aliens and Vast Wonderful Desolation

So I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and I'll be honest, I haven't read a book cover to cover in a long, long time. Shameful for a writer, shameful for a journalist, shameful for me, but I often find myself in these deserts, where I don't much time sitting still looking at anything that doesn't glow back at me. And I've tried, too. Tried reading World War Z, which Chris gave me, which takes an oral-history approach to a worldwide zombie epidemic, which had plenty of very keen ideas (it spreads via black market livers and kidneys from China; Israel quarantines itself first, paranoid and swift), which also never grabbed me by the throat and demanded I read the next page. A zombie book should do that, yes? I got stuck in the first third of The Dark Tower, the seventh and final book in a series that I have read and loved for a decade now, and can barely go on.

I did read, okay, straight through The Essential Silver Surfer, a black and white binding of the classic '60s books that I couldn't afford to actually collect. Love the Silver Surfer. The books are basically a series of soliloquies from a slipperly invincible alien stranded on our planet, unloved and unwanted, savaged by questions about his place in the world: I have the power to soar the universe, so why am I stuck here? I still have this short-lived '80s run around here somewhere, should find that.

Anyway, The Road. I read the first 150 pages in one sitting, more of a trance really, more of a waking dream. I read these pages and was cold inside, and I was awake and aware of my own delicate state of existence. I was truly, deeply scared. The language is sparse and direct, the characters do not have names and nor does the event that wiped out their world, but the tale of a man and his young son walking and walking and trying to stay alive is so otherwise detailed it chills me. How completely picked over every corner of civilization is, how absolutely no life, or food, or hope, is left anywhere, anywhere, and how a few handfuls of cornmeal found in a bag in a barn will keep you alive for another couple of days. It's the simple things that drive them on: We carry the light. We don't eat people, right? Because we're the good guys? I'm frightened for this Earth when I read this book, and I'm the most optimistic guy you know. Usually. Never thought I'd say this, but good for Oprah for putting such a dark and ferocious book into the hands of so many Americans. May it scare the shit out of them, too.

Technorati Tags: zombies, cormac mccarthy, oprah

Will My Favorite Writers Please—and I Mean It This Time—Stop Dying?

I can't say much about Vonnegut that Kevin doesn't in his wonderful post about numerous, strange encounters with the man, including a lecture we both attended at Northwestern. The best part of his story is a short letter Kurt wrote to Kevin, in which he laments:

"I am just back from England, having spoken at Oxford and the University of East Anglia. There as here, highly intelligent and honorable young people are wasting away spiritually for want of sympathetic elders willing and able to lead the way to somewhere good."

I read Man Without a Country twice in two days last year, and pick it up occasionally, mostly because it's the only Vonnegut book left in the house, after little sister went through some kind of kick and wanted to borrow everything. Haven't seen those since.

Hey Danielle. I want my Vonnegut books back.

Before the bad news, I had been thinking, hey, this has been and will be a very, very good year for writers I like. But certainly not if they keep dying, and I'm talking to you Robert Anton Wilson. On the bright side, though, where Vonnegut would likely not have us turn our attention, I need to remember that this is a year with a new Pynchon book, and a new DeLillo book, and a new Chuck book, which I'm reading now, and hell even Tolkien's got something cooking. What's up, Salinger, you want in on this? Anyway, a bright side, a pile of pages to cherish, and a master getting the love he deserves on a sad day.