Those are my people and this is the attitude C.S. Lewis warned against in That Hideous Strength because his grubby little provincial mind could not understand it, other than as blasphemy born out of hubris. It’s the attitude that led generations of fans to set up slan shacks or Ozark breeding camps, led us to try out every kook idea that offered a shortcut to the stars, from the Dean drive to Velikovskism, but it’s also what drives hundreds upon thousands of scientists and engineers to dedicate their lives to building, guiding and following unmanned probes to the far reaches of our Solar System, on missions that seem to mock our own aspirations to ever get there ourselves as they reveal how hostile even our benign corner of the universe is and how big.
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