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"The trouble with too much genre SF is that it's so obviously the product of the conscious mind."
- William Gibson
 |
| Decorate an Asteroid | ||
| Detailed artwork presented on a huge asteroid. |
This is one of Margaret St. Clair's most endearing tales.
As artists know, first you must prepare your canvas...
| IT WAS a long, long time ago that Tzzzu Tssssin landed on the asteroid. The asteroid now called Vesta was known as Szdrytho in those days, and its albedo was no higher than that of Ceres or Pallas, since its surface was dark and pitted and rough.
Tzzzu Tssssin came waddling out of the ship’s airlock onto the asteroid’s surface, his tail trailing behind him in his spacesuit. He rose to his full height, some ten or twelve feet, and looked around him with satisfaction. This asteroid was exactly the right size. Not too big, like Ceres and Pallas, not too small, as Juno was. Just the right size. He waddled back into the ship and got out the three cement-laying machines. They were of a type which a later age would know as “Partial Robots,” since they were equipped with some feed-back and individual response, but they had no function beyond that of laying a finegrained, stone-hard cement. The cement was porous at first, but dried as smooth as enamel after it was laid. It would, he figured, take them about a week to cover the asteroid. In the meantime, he could be checking over his designs. He went in the ship and pulled out his portfolio of xyla wood. Critically he looked over the designs it contained, shaking his heavy, bony head with satisfaction from time to time. Yes, they were really good... at last he came up with an idea whose epic simplicity and grandeur astonished him. He would paint the History of Civilization on the cement of the asteroid. The history of civilization! The rise of his people, the Szabor Szor, from their humble cotylosaurian beginning to their present dizzy, unchallenged eminence... in one hand he held the completed sheaf of drawings for his great work. He got a tractor, a pot of black paint, and a long-handled brush from the store room. He trundled the tractor outside, set it going, and sat down on it. He pressed a stud. At the speed of about a quarter of a mile an hour, he began to move over the surface of the asteroid. He speeded up the tractor after the first hour, but even at that it took him thirty-six days to transfer his design from the cartoon in mnoo carbon to the cement. He could have made better time if he had used an ipsifex with an enlarger attachment, but he considered that the freehand method of reproduction he was using would give his painting more character. Mechanization was one of the curses of modern life, anyhow. WHEN the design was all laid out, he took the life-craft from his ship and cruised around the asteroid slowly, looking at it. It was — well, he was proud of himself. The simplicity and grandeur of the theme, combined with the subtlety of the execution, seemed to embody all that was meant by the proud word “Lizard-like.” |
| Technovelgy from The Muralist,
by Margaret St. Clair. Published by Startling Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Frankly, I can't think of that many similar examples of this idea. However, I do recall that in The Atrocity Archives (2004), science fiction author Charles Stross described a scenario in which a likeness of Adolf Hitler was scribed upon the Moon.
There is another example, provided by sf author Robert F. Young; the story is Goddess in Granite (1957):
The altimeter of the life-raft had
registered 55,000 feet when he first
sighted her, and he approached her
at that level. Presently he saw the
splendid ridges of her calves and
thighs creep by beneath him, the
white desert of her stomach; the
delicate cwm of her navel. He was
above the twin mountains of her
breasts, within sight of the mesa of
her face, before it occurred to him
that, by lifting the raft, he might
gain a much better perspective.
He canceled his horizontal momentum and depressed the altitude
button. The raft climbed swiftly.
60,000 feet... 65,000... 70,000. It
was like focusing a telescreen.
80,000... His heart was pounding now. 90,000 ... The oxygen
dial indicated normal pressure, but
he could hardly breathe.
He jammed the altitude button
hard, locking the focus. He could
not breathe at all now-at least not
for the first, ecstatic moment. He
had never seen anyone quite like
her. It was early spring, and her
hair was black; her eyes were a
springtime blue. And it seemed to
him that the mesa of her face
abounded in compassion, that the red rimrock of her mouth was
curved in a gentle smile . . .
She lay there immobile by the
sea, a Brobdingnagian beauty come
out of the water to bask forever in
the sun. The barren lowlands were
a summer beach; the glittering
ruins of a nearby city were an earring dropped from her ear; and
the sea was a summer lake, the liferaft, a metallic gull hovering high
above the littoral.
Yet, despite her sculptors' meticulous attention to details, the Virgin, viewed from so close a range,
fell far short of the beauty and perfection they had intended. That
was because you could only see
part of her at a time: her cheek, her
hair, her breasts, the distant contour of her thigh. But when you
viewed her from the right altitude,
the effect was altogether different.
Even from a height of ten miles,
her beauty was perceptible; at 75,000 feet, it was undeniable. But
you had to go higher yet-had to
find the exact level, in fact-before
you could see her as her sculptors
had meant her to be seen...
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