Freezing out by Pluto,
Roasting near the sun,
Drenched by the rains of Saturn’s plains,
It’s all a space-man’s fun!Tramping old Mars’ deserts,
Or sailing Neptune’s seas,
Or wading the damp Venusian swamp,
Oh, that’s the life for me!
— Old space-song, Calling Captain Future
It’s been a busy few weeks. Sorry for the delay in writing. Besides several non-pulp-related projects that have taken quite a lot of my time, I also have been, as the song above says, trudging through the Jovian jungles, diving beneath Neptune’s seas and exploring the cold chasms of the Moon.
Well, at least I should be doing that.
Sixty-six years from now, what will we be doing? Vacationing in orbit? Visiting the Apollo 11 Planetary Historical Monument on the lunar surface? Roving over the sands of Mars?
Sixty-six years ago, the future looked just as exciting. We would be traveling the Solar System, visiting with our planetary neighbors on Venus, Mars and the outer planets and their moon-worlds.
According to the future history told in the Captain Future pulps, the first space explorers ventured across the Solar System in 1971. By 2000, there was a vibrant system-wide economy, thanks to the discovery of gravium, a substance that allows space travelers to equalize the gravity on the various planets and to fuel interplanetary spacecraft. Heck, by now — 2006 — we should be living the good space-life!
Sadly, we’ve only sent the dinghy out a few thousand feet from the shore.
– William
