"Elizabeth Moon - Those who Walk in Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

industrial or scientific endeavors. Space-suited figures adjusting
telescopes on the far side of the Moon, sweating construction
workers fitting together another section of habitat or workspace.
The Moon is clearly Space, and Space, someone said, has no
weather тАФan arguable thesis, but meant (in that case) to extoll the
virtues of living in a planned, controllable environment. No sudden
tornadoes, no wild floods, no killing frosts just when the peaches
bloom or the oranges ripen.
Far from such a planned environment, this terrestrial Moon lives in
a small town brimful of real weather. Hail this spring pitted the
young fruit; a tornado ripped the guts out of a neighboring town;
drought parches the grass and floods undermine the fence corners.
More than that, the mind has its own weather, as hard to predict and
control as the planetтАЩs whirl of wind and water. Even in weatherless
space, in the shuttle or space station, on the cloudless, rainless
Moon, the human mind would have storms, whirlwinds, long cold
frozen winters and sudden thaws, rising floods and barren droughts.
Human societies form contentious factions that clash like warm
Gulf air and a Canadian cold front, producing political upheavals,
deadly fireworksтАж the exterior human weather that buffets all of us.

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Moon, Elizabeth - Lunar Activity SS 10- Those Who Walk in Darkness



And on our world, the visible weather of atmospheric movement is
partnered by the invisible contention of plate tectonics. As the
meeting of atmospheric forces throws up great walls of cumulus, the
meeting of plates sends mountain ranges surging upтАФand these in
turn affect continental weather for centuries.
Living in a small town, in a true (if imperfect) community, all the
layers of weather lie open to the eye. There are fewer grandly
engineered edifices to hide the cloud patterns and individual
motives, as skyscrapers and corporations do. Under our feet, the
rock witnesses to ancient weathers, then erodes under present
storms to form tomorrowтАЩs sedimentsтАж just as ancient grievances
and alliances appear as fossilized relationships that send small
replicas out into the world to replay the same games. Interfaces
matter: where people touch, where atmosphere shapes geology,
where science and technology meet human emotion and biology.
Science fiction is the logical result of letting a Moon loose in small
town weather.




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Moon, Elizabeth - Lunar Activity SS 10- Those Who Walk in Darkness