I’ve
been reading one of my great inspirations, Ray Bradbury – his collected
non-fiction writings called “Bradbury Speaks”. . . On pages 46-47 I found this wonderful gem [I can “hear”
this in Carl Sagan’s voice]:
“The
unknown celestial environment cries out to be known. We are the delegates of
cognition whose task it is to witness and celebrate. The Cosmos thrives through
us. The dead stuffs of planetary time are roused to life because we say it’s
so. We pitiful worms have dreamed a cocoon of metal, glass, and fire and have
come forth as homely moths and then fine papillons to cross space and annul
time. Our conscious mind wonders at
this. Our secret mind knows. It speaks. We listen and dream ourselves better
cocoons.” – Ray Bradbury
If, in the not too distant future, we
survive our own lesser natures burning to destroy us, and succeed in building
and manning the ships that cross the interstellar seas, it will be the greatest
ingratitude if we do not christen our ships with the monikers of those
envisioneers, those literary spellbinders named Bradbury, Burroughs, Wells,
Asimov, Heinlein, Clark and others who have sailed there before us, taking us
with them, that we may meet ourselves in their company at some far distant time
in the silent expanse of solitude and destiny that is space, our final
frontier. -- JMAG
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