Monday, July 12, 2010

europa


i love classic sci-fi about mars. it (and the two rovers that were supposed to last 6 weeks but lasted YEARS instead) is largely responsible for my love of that planet. but it seems to me that modern sci-fi could do a lot with europa (which is the frozen moon of Jupiter, for those of you not in the know about these things). i know, i know, the imagination can stretch beyond the solar system and nowadays most writers are tackling deep space landscapes, but we haven't even managed a manned mission to MARS yet and the kepler project was just launched. europa looks like a damn good setting to me. the mysteries under its ice are a lot like the martian canals of old. i, personally, like to imagine people setting up massive stations under the ice (it's supposedly warmer in there and you'd be protected from the occasional asteroid). ... so now it's a toss-up. would i rather live on mars on the surface? or on europa, under the sea of ice? hmmm...

5 comments:

taipalmgren said...

Have you read 2010: Odyssey Two? Europa figures prominently. (Now's a good year to read it!)

Sara said...

i haven't! i just tried to read... omigosh, now i can't remember the title... by clarke and got very bored. so i started reading heinlein instead. :) but now i will give 2010 a shot! it's still hiding in this apartment somewhere...

Candy said...

Agreed - I think Europa would make a really intriguing setting.

I'll have to read 2010: Odyssey Two now...

Andrea said...

I like the texture in your painting. I don't like sci-fi. I love you, though.

... said...

I'd go for the ice world. There'd be no shortage of frozen food storage, and, just imagine... Europa, ICECREAM CAPITOL OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM! Err, provided you could set up a dairy farm under there, that is...