1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack

Tag: Kornbluth

  • I’d Buy That For A Dollar!

    This bag, standing abandoned near a phone booth and some garbage bags quickly reminded me of Cyril Kornbluth’s masterpiece “The Little Black Bag” and it’s follow up story “The Marching Morons”. I strongly recommend you get acquainted with Mr Kornbluth ASAP. If you are not cheap, splurge on NESFA’s fine compilation.

    I bet that bag held a laptop from the year 2047 that could write “Enterprise quality” software by itself. But I somehow chickened out and did not check its contents. Could be a severed head just as well.
    This bag, standing abandoned near a phone booth and some garbage bags quickly reminded me of Cyril Kornbluth’s masterpiece “The Little Black Bag” and it’s follow up story “The Marching Morons”. I strongly recommend you get acquainted with Mr Kornbluth ASAP. If you are not cheap, splurge on NESFA’s fine compilation.

    I bet that bag held a laptop from the year 2047 that could write “Enterprise quality” software by itself. But I somehow chickened out and did not check its contents. Could be a severed head just as well.

  • I’d buy that for a dollar

    Biometric fingerprint reader on the latest iPAQ? I’d buy that for a dollar!

    Which reminds me, I need to write “Best Sci-fi You Haven’t Read Part IV” about Cyril Kornbluth. You see, quote from the movie “Robocop”, “I’d buy that for a dollar”, is actually an allusion to “I’d buy that for a quarter” from Cyril Kornbluth’s story “The Marching Morons”. That’s inflation for you :)

1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack