James A. Zarzana.com
  • Home/Bio
  • The Eclectic Blog
  • Poetry
    • At the Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, May 2010
  • Marsco Saga
    • Summary
    • Sample Chapters >
      • The Dissident's Daughter
      • The Plague Ship
  • Miscellany
  • Contact

Walter Miller's Journal

6/30/2014

0 Comments

 
                Walter C. Miller’s Journal

                  Sac City, May 10, 2092

               (In 2014, Sac City is known as
                   Sacramento, California)

            Keeping track of Tessa is a bit daunting, even for me, her father. Bethany and I always gave her free rein, and for most of her life, she stayed pretty much in the range of our own skeptical view of Marsco. Life on Mars afforded us that. And working for Herriff at his Van Braun Center in the gigantic rift valley of the Red Planet, Valles Marineris, a sprawling research complex dug into its cliffs, helped as well. Tessa is now in her early 30s, although physically she’s younger than that due to her hibernation trips. Most space-based Marsco Associates share in that, a protracted life due to icing on space journeys. I’m a good example of that, too. I’m in my 60s, but look like I’m mid-40.

            Now, however, Tessa has her own view of Marsco and of being an associate. Comes with the territory of nurturing an independent, thinking child, I guess.

            Bethany and I raised Tessa on Mars at the VBC from when she was a child until she was 18. We went there because Earth was on the verge of war. We could tell; all the signs were obvious. And we were right.

            Safe at Herriff’s VBC, I researched and Bethany worked on Martian water/ice recovery and reuse. Tessa grew. She was for many years the only child at the Center. Of course, with a war raging on Earth, on or in the orbit around the Moon, out even to some Asteroid Belt colonies, the population at the VBC didn’t increase much. Even in the other colonies, everything flat-lined for the three years of the Continental Wars. When they ended, the Wars that brought Marsco to power, it seemed best to remain in situ and not tempt a return to the Blue Planet. So Red Mars, named for the god of war, became a safe haven for a decade or longer as the atmosphere and politics on Earth settled down. The Blue Planet looked pretty brown from here, seen through a telescope, since its atmosphere was dust-filled, the by-product of war.

            But everything changes after a time. Bethany and I wanted to return to Earth eventually. We knew we were privileged being Marsco Associates, and we also knew Bethany was dying. She wanted to come home and die here on Earth.

            I had planned on returning to my hometown of Sac City, what was once Sacramento, California. (An infamous location during to the Wars.) But Bethany was too weak to take on the task of developing this plot of land, so we stayed in Seattle. By that time, Tessa was a plebe at the Marsco Academy there anyway. We remained as close to each other as possible. Only after Bethany died during Tessa’s first year in the Academy did I venture south to begin salvaging this land that has become my grange.

            That was nine years ago.

            Much can happen in nine years. For one, Tessa’s Marsco career has taken off. She graduated from the Academy and received her commission. She went to MIT, the Marsco Institute of Technology, which is actually the graduate research wing of the Academy. She charged through her course work and research. But before she actually dotted all the “i’s” and crossed all the “t’s” on her final project, her dissertation, she was moved back to the Academy to begin teaching. She’s there now, an officer, but not yet a holder of her doctorate. Pardon me for sounding like an academic, but no one should ever do all her doctoral grunt work, years of research, and not finish!

            But it’s more complicated; she’s more complicated. Makes sense given our complicated Marsco world.

            Once she was so in love with Zot, Anthony “Zot” Grizotti, a fellow Academy cadet, now on his way to Jupiter with his finger disks twitching away on a mysterious, black project for the VBC, my old cadre of engineers and researchers under the auspices of Herriff on Mars.

            I shouldn’t comment on his research, but—against all odds and tradition—Zot had been commissioned an officer after his Academy days then elected to pursue Hibernation Technology. To some, quite a career shift, if not a downright dead-end job for a Marsco officer. Better than Security, I guess, but still, icemen or hibermen aren’t that high up the Marsco pecking order. His clandestine research is tied to hibernation, that I will say.

            I like Zot. I love him like a son. But something happened with them. Tessa can be stubborn. That’s an understatement. And she took up with this pilot who was all smoke and no fire. Zot himself is a solid man, no guessing with him. He came and went here a few times; she refused to visit. Then, he was gone. Trekking to Jupiter, even with the best Marsco and VBC spacecraft (which I helped design), getting there and back safely is a four-year journey with no certainty of success.

            But this is mostly about Tessa. And now, today, she’s in a sort of No Man’s Land: not with Zot, not fully with anyone (not that it matters), and not fully graduated and not fully happy. Fully in Marsco.

             Not fully talking to me, either.

            That another complication in her life—me. Over the past nine years, I have been here, in my grange about 20 clicks south of central Sac City, in a sort of gray zone. And in our Marsco world, such a locale as this one is nearly impossible. Everything is discrete with Marsco, carefully delineated and separated: associate, sid (a denizen of a subsidiary), or PRIM.

            Most of the world is PRIM-listed. I have tried to find exact census data for PRIMS, but I doubt Marsco bothers to count them. I’d have to say probably 80% of the Earth’s population, possibly higher, is PRIMS. (No PRIMS live in space.) There can’t be any more than 5% of the population in Marsco. That leaves about 15% as sids, who have a substantially better life than any PRIM, but who aren’t associates. Their lot can’t be easy. A PRIM’s lot is pretty horrific any way you slice it. And Marsco aims to keep it that way.

            Associates live in Sectors, Marsco Sectors, or protected Cantonments near or in Subsidiaries. Sids obviously inhabit these subsidiaries, which are marginally better areas than PRIM areas: safe, clean, near Marsco hubs. PRIMS live in Unincorporated Zones, guarded by Marsco or their sid henchmen. Used as brutish laborers, kept disenfranchised, uneducated, distant from any self-respecting Associate.  

            And here I live, in this gray area. Technically, part of the large Sac City Subsidiary, but not really. It’s populated by too many Independent Grangers, Indies, who aren’t sids or PRIMS, and except for me, never tied to Marsco. And really, we’re not in a Zone, either, although it can look like it. Here I live, in no place really Marsco, although I live exceedingly well.

            To make it work, I’ve adapted selected space equipment like humidity condensers for ample and consistent water, and like my kitchen appliances that run off solar. And I’ve redeveloped these few acres of land to be productive. I do hire PRIMS to help, but pay them well. I’ve even started a small village for them down the road so they can live better, cleaner, safer than in any Zone. From there, some of my neighbor grangers also hire them, but an Independent granger is pretty suspicious of a PRIM. I’ve worked hard to establish mutual trust. Not as hard as those PRIMS work, but hard enough.

            So, I guess that sums it up. I’m technically on sabbatical from Marsco, but practically, I’m an Independent Granger and yet one with all the fingerdisks of a top lefter within Marsco. And my only child, Tessa, is estranged from me because of my writing.

            I should mention that. Even though trained as an engineer, I’ve only marginally kept active in designing any spaceships these days. I mostly spend my time trying to crack (yes, that kind of crack) to break into Marsco encrypted and secure databanks and old cobweb sites to research and write a factual and accurate history of how Marsco rose to power. The Ascendancy of Marsco. It’s mostly just fragmented data at this point. But, nearly fourteen voices tell their story of the prewar world under the Continental Powers, the draconian rulers of the Earth that Marsco took down.

            That was nearly 25 years ago. At the time of the Armistice, Marsco claimed its new role as world leader was strictly temporary until stability returned.

            Two and a half decades down the road, it looks like one group of draconian rulers has been replaced by another. Marsco seems pretty thoroughly ensconced in the power structures of Earth, the Moon and Mars colonies, even out to the Asteroid Belt colonies, the limit of its reach. Except for Zot heading towards Jupiter, Marsco has contented itself with staying inside, on this side, of the Belt.

            But I digress. Tessa is coming. She’s been sent pieces of The Ascendancy. I doubt she’s read any. It will be wonderful to see her, even if we are tense and combative. She is so like her mother—and me—for that matter. It will be great to have her here. I’ve much to show her.

            And she brings kilos of Seattle coffee, a commodity I have difficulty securing in this locale. 


0 Comments

Guest Blog from Tessa Miller

5/31/2014

0 Comments

 
Here is the first of several guest blogs written by characters from The Marsco Dissident. I hope you enjoy this insight into Tessa; I imagine this coming from her just before Book I begins in Sac City, in the year 2092.





Tessa Miller, of The Marsco Dissident, guest blog


            Most people don’t know the frustrations of being ABD: All But Dissertation. Of being stuck at the extreme end (the precipice?) of a long, arduous scholarly task. So I’ve got my data collected, my review of previous research completed, and here I sit. The Integration of Computer Systems with Propulsion Optimization: A New Model. Fancy title, long bibliography, clear numbers crunched, blank screen in front of me, and nothing.

            I could speak of my dissertation for hours, of its importance to Marsco, to science and engineering in general, to my plebes, to my career.

            But you’d rather listen to me to talk about my father, Walter Miller, and probably (you’d think?) my former, Zot.

            Procrastination: putting the trivial before the significant.

            Or just shutting down. I’m good at that. Look at that pilot I hung with for far too long, partly to piss off Zot, and partly because everyone needs a companion. But I was shut down that whole time, drifting along, oblivious to all the warning signs of train wreck. You can’t break your heart a second time when you’re using Number 2 to put off dealing with Number 1.

            Why am I telling you this?

            So I don’t spill my guts about Walter and Zot, of course. I’m too controlled for that. Too emotionally detached. I have most people convinced I’m totally together. I’m the one without a hair out of place, my uniform impeccable, my exterior a spotless, polished veneer. My inner life? Turmoil replete with my ripped up guts I refuse to deal with.

            Then again, why not spill them?

            Walter C. Miller, Jr., PhD, Astro-engineer, co-designer of the Herriff-Miller’s that propel Marsco and those few Independent Shuttles that ply between the Moon and the Asteroid Belt. That Miller, he’s my father.

          You’d think that would help my career, except that he’s gone off the beaten Marsco track and become some sort of dissident. Not really a thorn in Marsco’s side. (He’s totally harmless, I’m sure.) But he’s not exactly a rose in a vase at its breakfast table either. He’s a questioner. More philosopher and historian than engineer now, even though back in his day, his theories garnered much praise.

            I should have visited him sooner, since he’s alone and widowed, but things got in my way. Ok, I let things get in my way.

            Zot was there a few times; he let me know that. Even out and out invited me to visit my own father at Walter’s grange near Sac City, that Sacramento, the former capital of the Continental Powers, Marsco’s last enemy, the last bastion of the Powers resistance. But, I refused to go. My excuse? Grading exams and continuing my dissertation research; used my status as an untenured prof at the Marsco Academy (where I’m an assistant professor of astro-engineering), pleaded that these were all vastly more important.

            Zot, Anthony “Zot” Grizotti. An ensign last I heard. (Which makes no sense: hibernation service doesn’t need officers, but there he is.) He’s an iceman, or a hibernation specialist, but not one on a routine Moon-to-Belt mission; no, he’s on some black mission for the Van Braun Center on Mars. Their ship, the Gagarin, is speeding towards Jupiter. Marsco’s first mission beyond the Asteroid Belt, first manned mission. Recon trip for Marsco, but why? For what?

          The crew manifest shows ample icing personnel without Zot. And he never signs any hiber reports, so his duties (even though he’s the sole officer among the hibermen) remain a mystery to me. If he’s in charge (an obvious conclusion), then why haven’t all those posted icing reports come out under his name? If he’s not in charge, what’s he doing on a four-year space flight that’s going beyond Marsco colonies within the Asteroid Belt all the way out to godforsaken Jupiter? What’s he doing?

            I’ve also checked the whole crew manifest: scientists, pilots and other flight crew. Some hot numbers, those gals on the Gagarin. And Zot, a brown-eyed and soulful iceman with a tale to tell and time to tell it, could put every gullible babe onboard into a swoon with his dark features. And if a swoon? But, Zot’s really not like that, all those rumors you hear of randy hibermen, taking advantage of whomever they wish once the crew’s iced.        

          Those two men aside, I do want to visit my father’s grange. Not to see Zot (who can’t possibly be there) and not really to see my father, Walter, either. I’m not seeking to bury the hatchet with him. A hatchet I put between us over Marsco.

          I miss his dogs. They’d be fun to see again. Io and Deimos. Mutts for sure, but loving.

            I have no siblings. No mother, either; she died several years back. At her funeral, when Zot and I were both plebes at the Academy, that’s when I first looked at Zot differently. That epiphany moment. Have loved him since, well, except I’ve stopped loving him now, too, because I don’t really love him anymore, not as much as I did once, so intensely and passionately. That kind of love someone doesn’t forget, except I have, or am forgetting it. And after having a relationship with Zot, rock-solid Zot, why was I with that space-jockey player who’s as sincere as mist and as consistent as smoke?

            Don’t ask.

            Shut down. Denial. Buttoned up. That’s me. And ever-truthful.

            Zot won’t be there.

            Walter will be. And his dogs.

            I have to go, if for my mother’s sake. It’s been three years since I’ve seen Walter. Long enough to forget Zot and return to my father’s place with some adult-daughter distance between us.

            I’m going by ground, too. High-speed bullet from Seattle to a Marsco Sector just north of Silicon. Then a local rust bucket from Marsco luxury to the Sac City Subsidiary. But it will be fine. I want to see how wrong my father is about Marsco. Want to see the transformation, positive transformation, that Marsco reports. Talk of denial. Walter denies all this Marsco advancement.

            I know it’s true. Marsco said so. Why would Marsco lie?

            What does it have to gain by being opaque? It’s always been transparent with its intentions since it seized power, I mean, gained power, reluctantly taking up political power to run the whole world after the Continental Wars devastated the Earth, the Moon colonies, and even some of the sites on Mars.

            It’s a Marsco world, and Marsco’s doing a fine job running it.

            And Zot on the Gagarin and Walter sequestered at his grange, they’ve taken themselves out of the Marsco world. If that’s really possible.

          Crazy. Insane. Enigmas both. Men! 



                                    *
The Marsco Dissident is available now on Amazon for e-readers only. It will be available in print on July 20, 2014. I hope you enjoy a copy in whichever format you prefer.

            


0 Comments

Marsco Readings and Reports

9/28/2013

0 Comments

 
September 28, 2013 – Saturday – Grading and Game Day

            Okay, so I am slow on the uptake of technology. I have begun to make PowerPoint presentations for class in the past year, for example; it’s taken me that long to get going on that.

            I was looking for my Cloud connection today, so I can send my work from my office computer to my laptop easily. Instead of finding the Cloud, I found this instant blog link. So, I’m writing this “entry” in my journal this morning with the intention of posting it via my computer right to my blog. We’ll see if it, one, works, and two, if I have anything to say.

            I started my blog to get more buzz out there about my work, specifically The Marsco Saga, my four-volume speculative sci-fi piece. I am happy to report (as many of you know) that the first novel, The Marsco Dissident, is now available on Amazon for e-reader download. It has been up since June and sales are happening.

            This month, I did a pair of radio interviews locally (NPR hasn’t called yet). These shows were via SMSU and owe their manifestation to Jim Tate who is the campus PR guru. Jim organized them and was my front man for them. In a word, they were a hoot. I had never really been on a show like this. (I have to add, by the way, that Jim is part of a gaggle of SMSU folks who have made this project possible: Jim, Marcy—the cover, Dana—Kindle format, Neil—encouragement to go to e-publishing format: SMSU all!)

            The first locally, KMHL in Marshall, I sat in the booth with the glass separation and deadening sound. Earphone and mic. I saw the radio host on the other side of that dividing glass. It went pretty well. The second I was at home and did the same over a pre-arranged phone call. I liked the first better; it gave me a sense of “being on the air” as opposed to just chatting and looking at all-too-familiar surroundings. Those listeners who heard me said I did a creditable job. I thought so, too.

          I was asked to speak of future projects, so I explained that all English profs have at least one novel in them parodying academic life. That caught the campus attention. I do have such a novel organized; it will have to wait until after The Marsco Saga and The Aries-Augustan Saga are published; both multi-volume sci-fi works. Marsco is finished; Augustan is underway.

        My two readings went extremely well on Tuesday September 17th. At noon I was at the Marshall/Lyon County Library. That night back at SMSU.

     The Library garnered a small crowd of 16 listeners. But, they listened and asked good questions. This experience was a great warm-up for my evening reading.

     Back on campus, I spoke and read to 115 people. I was blown away by their attendance and interest. I spoke, read my first passage and then answered some questions. Once more, good questions. Then I read a second passage with answers following. My whole time went an hour. Not sure how many sales I made, but it has all generated a host of Spur articles, (our campus student newspaper) and a bit of buzz in Marshall.

     To current readers and owners of The Marsco Dissident, I once more say thanks. To future readers, I do want you to know I have reduced the price to $3.99. Dissident can be downloaded to a Kindle, an iPad or iPhone, or any PC with the right (and free) app. I am looking into print-on-demand; will keep you posted on that. Of course, I won’t chase away the chance to have a publisher pick it up for mass marketing. To viewers of this blog who might be unwilling to buy the book, there are two chapters posted on my site that give you a taste of the novel. Enjoy them first before you download the whole piece. I am sure they will convince you that my work is worth the time and effort to read.

     Until next time, good reading and Go, Mustangs!  And Go, Irish! Beat the Sooners!

0 Comments

Science Fiction: Plans, Sidetracks, and Endpoints

10/26/2011

1 Comment

 
  Science Fiction:  Plans, Sidetracks, and Endpoints 
   
     For over a year, I’ve been telling students and colleagues that I was willing to venture into the realm of teaching creative writing.  I am the Chair of an English Department quite famous for its writers. 
I’m not putting myself into that august group, but I wanted to pull my own weight in terms of taking on a
workshop.  The Department has recently begun a new class format that is the perfect venue.  
    
    Instead of a 4-hour weekly workshop, we have these new flexible mini-workshops for only 2 hours per week.  I didn’t need to go off the high dive; I was going to stand on the edge of the pool and dive (or belly-flop) with a short offering.  
 
    It was to be my first-ever sortie into teaching any type of sci-fi and/or creative writing workshop.  
 
    Although eager, I was nonetheless intimidated.  
 
    I shouldn’t be because, after all, I know  something of writing and something of sci-fi.  I have put together 4 such novels since the late 90s, working in a lonely and silent workshop (my home office) and pouring myself into a horrific world not so
farfetched from what we have now.  
 
    In these four linked novels,
The Marsco Saga, I have space travel, love, political catastrophe, plus colonies on the Moon, Mars, the asteroids.  A war is about to break out; a ragtag band of optimistic (and literate) heroic dissidents are not willing to knuckle under; and a religious lunatic (living in a cave) is willing to destroy everyone else to prove his messianic beliefs are correct.  (I slapped
him into an Amazon rainforest cave long before
9/11.)
          
     The creative writing class was a great idea. 
Science fiction and fantasy are extremely popular. 
Since I’m on the verge of publishing my own books, I readily agreed to do a mini-workshop and let the dragons, war-bots, green-goo-attacker-globs, dark
and shadowy killer thingies fall where they may.

    Sadly, these “best laid plans” have fallen by the wayside. I fell behind over the summer so I never got a handle on a clear conception for the class; I had to beg off offering this class in Spring ’12.  To my surprise, my office door on campus was not surrounded by ranks of zombies, creatures from black lagoons, diaphanous and silken-clad alien women lusting for my soul but really desperately needing my blood and marrow to live.  

    Had these ET hordes assailed me, I would have cautioned them, don’t mess with me, you alluring creatures from a galaxy far, far away.  Marianne is
like the honey badger protecting me and will rip out your pulsing innards, you green-blooded beauties who talk in stilted English.  You know the kind, spandex accentuating them just right, threatening with chilling remarks like, “All your orbit bases and hunk-men are belong to us. . . .”
             
     It would have been a good class. 
              
     I had looked for a textbook and found the
How
to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card came with the highest recommendations.  I crossed paths with him once in graduate school before he hit it big as a fulltime sci-fi writer, but he wouldn’t know me from Obi Wan Kenobi.  

     His enormously successful Ender’s Game didn’t capture my attention when I started it many years ago.  Since I was then in my 40s, the appeal of youthful anxiety so central to the novel didn’t grab me, invite me into that world.  My nephews read him while in high school and loved him.  Card’s
protagonist has that dour, loner, teenage angst, which I had long since lost by the time I opened the novel.  It’s not that other works primarily written for young adults can’t hold my attention; I love all seven Harry Potter works and have devoured them twice.  The same is true of
The Lord of the Rings.

    However, Card’s How to Write is helpful and honest about the struggles of trying to craft fiction professionally on a sustained basis.  “Don’t quit your day job” is just one of his many admonitions; “this gig is harder than it looks.”  And I love his understanding of the sci-fi genre and why some of us embrace it willingly: 
  
    “One surprising result of the ghettoizing of 
speculative fiction, however, is that writers have enormous freedom within its walls. It’s as if, having once confined us [sci-fi, speculative, and fantasy
writers] within our cage, the keepers of the zoo of literature don’t much care what we do so long as we stay behind bars.”
  

     I hadn’t thought much about it, but when I created my world of Marsco (disease-ridden, dysfunctional politically and socially, rewarding and sustaining only an elite clique), I thought I was
simply exaggerating the world around us.  I explained to someone recently that the mainthe-reader-has-to-buy-this-exaggeration of the Marsco world is simply that the Third World is no longer out of sight on the other side of the world, but it’s on the next city block.  
 
    Marsco has the power to control who crosses the street and when.  Today, in our real world, Israel is
walling itself away from Palestinians.  In the Marsco world, this is happening but on a total planetary level, not in the far corner of the Mediterranean.

    But, back to class!  We were to read Walter M.
Miller’s A
Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel I want my students to know.  In this Cold War-era story, the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war, typical sci-fi fare from that paranoid and wary age.  The novel is set at a remote monastery in the southwest desert of the old USA. There, the monks are hand- copying books because after the atomic conflagration, the survivors blamed
knowledge and the literate for ending their 21st Century world.  So, intellectuals, scientists, educators alike are doomed, hunted and
attacked with merciless savagery after the atomic fires died down. Any books that survived the war went up in smoke afterwards, scapegoats for the catastrophe that brought the world to the edge of
extinction.  

     As the novel begins, it is 600 years after the war, but the world is still in ruins.  Miller’s world is roughly analogous to the 5th or 6th Century of our real history after the Fall of Rome.  The monks at the abbey are painstakingly laboring away on vellum like real monks did in our distant past.  

     The next section is roughly another 600 years later, in what would be our own historical world on
the verge of the Renaissance. When secular scholars visit the monastery seeking any text that deals with
theoretical physics and engineering, the monks have already made a treadmill-run generator that allows their visitors to read by a primitive electric light.  The visitors are devastated when they realize their incipient theories are not in fact new ones, but rediscoveries from an old world long past; they’re doubly upset because these desert hermits are a century ahead of their fledgling scientific hypotheses.  
 
     The last section is set 2400 years after the first conflagration and the world is on the verge of a second nuclear holocaust.  Having forgotten their own history, arrogant and tech-mastering humans are condemned to relive it.

     Even though steeped in Roman Catholic monasticism (the monks are authentic Dominicans who still speak in Latin), and even though our own Cold War fears have eased, Canticle is a tremendous book.  Well-crafted.  Keenly paced.  Generously
described.  Readers feel like they have entered Miller’s Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern redux. 
He captures the political machinations of those trying to harness science for their own means, not for the good of the whole.  He creates believable characters caught in the political webs and intrigues of their world.  The science fiction creeps in; it does not saturate.  Radiation-mutilated humans with extra
heads or arms roam about, reminders of the nuclear war long past, of science run amuck, of hubris fouling the world. 
 
     The novel opens with the unwitting discovery of a fallout shelter and its long-buried mysteries totally
misunderstood by monks in their nearly-destroyed, post-bellum world; these discoveries are understood by the reader:  Air lock? “Can of kraut and pound of pastrami”? Fallout itself—a mysterious ogre?

     And, Miller asks, how do you make ethical choices in such a world?  Indeed, how do we, today, in our real, wrap-knuckles-on-the-solid-desk-world right before us, how do we make ethical choices?  How do we live amid the injustices of our world?

     I ask these questions in The Marsco Saga.  My characters tend to be of Marsco, of the top 1% of the world in terms of political power and the necessities of life.  They have safety and comfort, freedom
from disease, crime, and the grime of a nearly-destroyed world. Most of the world’s population is held down to languish on the “nasty, brutish, and short” lowest stratum of society.  How do my characters’ consciences allow them to live while aware of this?  How do they live at all?  Or love?  Move about with any degree of freedom while knowing that their world is built on the backs of the
oppressed?

     It’s an exaggerated world, but also one much like our own.  In Card’s words, I write behind these bars.  And I chose to locate there so I can control the canvas backdrop and ask questions about that oppressive environment.  How do we make ethical choices in our own world?  How do we live and love
without becoming calloused and cynical?  
 
    Good speculative science fiction isn’t about the science, it’s about the speculation.  The British war poet Wilfred Owen wrote:  “All a poet can do is
warn.”  
 
    So, too, with the sci-fi writer:  we write to warn.

[So sorry I am late with this!  I plan to write on a more regular basis.  I'll keep you posted.  Also, check for updates on my Facebook wall.]

 
  
          

1 Comment

Oh, Mortal Columbia

7/8/2011

0 Comments

 
This is a poem which I can't figure out how to post on my poetry page!  It is about our lost Space Shuttles, Columbia and Challenger, written right after the Columbia disintergrated on her return to Earth.  I post it today in honor of our last shuttle mission launched today, that of Atlantis.  Hope you like it.

                                Oh, Mortal Columbia


                “All farewells should be sudden, when forever,
                     Else they make an eternity of moments.”
                                            Byron

 Oh, mortal Columbia, 
We stood in sunshine awaiting your astral return,
But downward you came, as a blazing meteor, 
A fallen, streaking Mercury, broken, whose message
Was of sudden despair not inspiring triumph.

We thought of you as Apollo, divine and
Impervious to human flaw.
Humbled, helpless we stood, watching your contrail
Proclaim your frailty that you alone had not forgotten;
Heard, felt, your blasting trumpet blare discordant.

Today, faced now with challenges unknown,
We look heavenward, harking the explorer’s call,
Casting off onto our endeavors necessary, perilous, 
Else all your enterprising strides of discovery 
Shall become as Atlantis, known only as myth.

Oh, mortal Columbia, Gemini now as never before
With your ascending sister descended, Challenger,
With her, oh, mortal Columbia, immortal.  
 
James A. Zarzana

0 Comments

    The purpose of this blog...

    The Zarzana Eclectic Blog seeks to occasionally publish essays about assorted topics that would interest a wide reading audience.

    Blogroll

    Marianne Zarzana

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    June 2014
    May 2014
    September 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All
    Books
    Cats
    Church And State
    Coffee
    Cowan Award
    Democracy
    Disability
    Dogs
    Downton Abbey
    Education
    Friends
    Italy
    Libya
    Marsco
    Marshall
    Minnesota Transfer Curriculum
    Movies
    Notre Dame
    Novels
    Reading
    Sicily
    Smsu
    Space
    The Civil War
    The Great War
    Time
    Travel
    Us Constitution
    Winter
    World War Two
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.