life on mars as described in the works of Joseph Conrad and George Orwell

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there

are inhabitants in the planet Mars.

 I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars.

 

If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved,

he would get shy and mutter something about `walking on all-fours.'

If you as much as smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--

offer to fight you."

Joseph Conrad  Heart of Darkness

 

 

"sometimes he said   when sleeping on the embankment  it had consoled  him to look up at mars  or  Jupiter  and think there were probably embankment sleepers  there.

he had a curious  theory about it

life on earth  he said  is harsh  because mars is poor in the necessities of existence .

mars  with it cold climate  and scanty water must  be far poorer  and life corresponding  harsher

where as on Earth you  are  merely  imprisoned   for stealing sixpence

on Mars  you are probably boiled alive"

George Orwell  down and out in Paris and London 1933

 

 

 

two unexpected science  fiction  quotations   from  unrelated works  of English literature

Thuria, mad queen of heaven!

"Cluros, the farther moon, was just

rising above the horizon to commence his leisurely journey

through the heavens. Eight zodes later he would set--a trifle

over nineteen and a half Earth hours--and during that time

Thuria, his vivacious mate, would have circled the planet twice

and be more than half way around on her third trip. She had but

just set. It would be more than three and a half hours before she

shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and low, across

the face of the dying planet.

 

It was the age-old miracle of the

Martian nights that is always new, even to Martians--two moons

resplendent in the heavens, where one had been but now;

conflicting, fast-changing shadows that altered the very hills

themselves; far Cluros, stately, majestic, almost stationary,

shedding his steady light upon the world below; Thuria, a great

and glorious orb, swinging swift across the vaulted dome of the

blue-black night,"

 

The Chessmen Of Mars      Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

 

any of the few who saw the  dire "john Carter" will reember if anything of the  loosely based plot that  the two martian moons  in that movie  were lunar spheroids in close o double rbis showing identical phases  not the fast moving low horizon thuria    orbiting three times a night "nocturnal Martian scene one of splendid and weird

grandeur." as Princess of Mars   desscribes it

based as theey were on Deimos and Phobos  orbits  (albeit ERB moons   were  more Swiftan than  Hall) the main  plot  device in the Barsoom books was the difficulty of  anyone  to  hide  under Thurias rapid  binary bright light

 

see my illustration of bright  racing Thuria   near the horizon  larger Cluros in the sky and the evening star Earth

 

making a astronomical sighting quadrant out of a protractor and a drinking straw

Owing to my hospitization and slow recovery rather a later post than originally intended

I  made this quadrant in 2007 but am now unable to find it or any of my other   made

kits  such as the Astrolabes, Moon phase dial and Nocturnal  at home   believed thrown out as just  bits of cardboard during my long absence

 

Tycho and Hevelius made many discoveries  with just such great  quadrants

 but here I made a simple  altitude instrument  reading to 90 degrees  and  consisting  of a  protractor  (see  template ) to which an ordinary  drinking straw was  fixed  horizoniclly as a sight  and  from which a plumb line   free weight  dangled on the end of  a string  tied through a hole  seen as a small circle  just above 0 degrees on the template

 Completed  the quadrant can be sighted on any astronomical object  and the altitude read off  on the scale  arc from the dangling plumb line

It of course  can   be tested like any  quadrant   by sighting on  Polaris   according to your latitude

 

 

all you need is

a   90 deg protractor  either  the old one from maths class  or print out the template and affix to hard card

a drinking straw

string  to attach weigh  falling to arc of quadrant

a weight or plumb bob