Surviving on Venus

So Google tells me that today is Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli's 174th birthday. Apparently, a long, long time ago, he drew a map of what he imagined was Mars, and his work apparently "started a revolution in astronomy." I should probably know who he is. I don't. I bet D and his family do.

Google's homepage got me thinking about Ray Bradbury, the science fiction author. Images of Mr. Bradbury had actually been dancing around in my head for a few days, so it was kind of an interesting coincidence to see something space-y broadcast on Google. Bradbury was fascinated with space - quite often with Mars, but really, space in general. He wrote some fantastically creepy stuff. I was introduced to his short stories in 8th grade, when my English teacher started reading, The Illustrated Man aloud to us in class. The first story in that book is one called, "The Veldt". (In case any readers are curious, it's a tale of a futuristic family that has a 3-D, interactive nursery for their kids. The kids imagine their surroundings, the walls of the nursery change, and voila! they can spend the afternoon playing in a virtual wonderland. Of course, the nursery is supposed to be imaginary - their surroundings aren't real. But the nursery malfunctions. And the results are terrifying.) To this day, I mark it as one of the best stories I've ever heard.

But "The Veldt" is not the reason for my recent Bradbury fixation. A little further on in the collection is one entitled, "The Long Rain". Here's the opening line: "The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and streaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain..."

It's about several men who have crashed their space ship on Venus. Since no one really knew anything about our solar system back in the 50's, Bradbury has imagined this - the perpetual rain, unfit for humans. The small band of astronauts are in search of a "Sun Dome" - a biosphere built by our government, full of creature comforts, and a replica of our Sun, in which humans can survive. Apparently, the constant downpour on Venus drives men insane. Or drowns them.

I'm sure you all can see where this is going.

Thankfully, we have a week of sunny weather in the forecast for us. Today is glorious - in the 50s. But last week we had 2 days of water, and we discovered a leak in our roof that empties directly into my closet. (The leak is easily fixable - not a big deal - just sort of frustrating at this point.) We now know what company we are going to use to repair our basement - but we found out that in order to do the jobs, we need to move most of what's in the basement out, up to the 1st floor. With the gathering baby stuff, my relocated closet, and now the basement stuff joining the first floor, things are getting crowded.

So much for our second bedroom. Ah well.