Attenuation: Letters From The Man In The Moon
Keith Basham
Author Bio
Keith Basham is a writer, an illustrator, and a cartoonist, who so far has mainly published in small local magazines, online, or an occasional newspaper.
Hailing from the American Southwest, his first publications appeared in a Taos, NM rag called BentZine, under the title Deeds of Derring-do -an illuminated strange fiction, as well as op-ed articles under various pseudonyms.
A few years of work in telecommunications and a life long love of science and science fiction led to the creation of a number of stories of interstellar travel and communication collectively titled Attenuation.
He now lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, Cris.
Description
Letters From The Man In The Moon wasn’t meant to be its own book. The story it tells and the narrative delivered therein was originally meant to make small appearances in a number of other short stories intended to be released as serial works, covering a span of time in the neighborhood of a half million years, during which the people of Earth struggle to establish a lasting foothold in space, and the nearest sun-like stars. The core of these stories being the problems of covering the times and distances required both for travel and communication between stars, without the benefits of the questionable technologies science fiction so commonly resorts to for storytelling. Thus, at the heart of the series which have yet to be released, are the Letters written back to Earth, by the man sent to create a permanent settlement at a nearby star.
Book excerpt
Hi, Folks. Larry again. I was pleased to find that you are still there. Lets catch up: You guys jumped the gun a bit. Its all good news/bad news, but at least there’s news. We’ve encountered three major instances of colonial development that lasted more than a thousand years, one of which made it nearly six thousand years before getting caught up in the machinery. They made a good go of it, living it up -living pretty fat in fact, mooching resources from the primordial clutter of this solar system.
That’s good news. My robots checked in on them from time to time, and we have a better picture of what went on after we left.
Nobody expected to see people stay the same over these spans of time, and though these folks made it here as a largely homogenous breed, there was some diversity among them, and the lot had a few subtle physiological differences from my own form of a trivial kind; more lung, genetic mods and prosthetic enhancement and so forth. They lived the rock-jock lifestyle a while then fell back into old human ways and got tribal and went to war after generations of struggle, as expansion taxed resources (which is how we know they are still us, more or less). We offered them access to our copy of the Resource Allocation program, but they made a fuss and nixed it. Greedy little shits there towards the end, but they really were just awesome to watch in the reruns. Brother, those guys knew how to live.
Still: six thousand years nearly covers the entire history of human civilization, at the time of my departure. These cowboys had a good run, before going in the grinder.
So there’s that. Nice try. Well done. Don’t give up. Long as you got people enough to spare, and some that are willing to make the leap, keep sending them. Even the coffins will help speed the process once this first real day of actual work is done. We’ve cleared the path, sorted the light from the dark, and already events are in motion which have us three rough sketches. Should be plenty of space for you to work with even if our planets aren’t yet fully cooked.
Moving much faster than most of the matter we tow, we aren’t yet able to anchor ourselves to anything but the sun itself, and we need quite a few orbits before any of the planes in the habitable zone are safe places to stop. Not ready to park yet anyway. Lots more to do. Watch out for us, though. We don’t move in an easily predictable manner, and can’t really deviate from our path let alone dodge or evade. As the mission progresses we will be making things even more orderly, but for the next little while we are going to be really stirring up a fuss amongst the muss. From finest dust to these burly ice giants, it’s a shakedown. We are a real threat to anyone with plans here for this next phase.
As this message arrives there will be a few thousand years of grace for that warning, so if you can make it here and think that’s enough time for your colony to survive and be worth the trip, go for it. Things will be getting hot here, for a while. Not unsurvivable, but you really will want to coordinate any long term plans with our robots.
This vulgar young star is going to need some taming. We reckon we can pull that off just by adding some nickel and iron. Probably several planets’ worth, even to make to make a blip of difference, but there’s plenty here to spare, we think. Just about every scrap of matter we don’t have a direct use for is just going to be plowed starward. If I had time, I’d just plonk that wobbly old gasbag planet smack into the star and be done, but that would put us off by more time than we need to spend. I mean we basically just have to calm this puppy down, to mitigate the UV and coronal activity over the long run. The answer for that is mass and fuel. It will never be Sol, but we can do a little now, and a little at at time until we are done here that will go a long way towards cultivating a more civilized and merciful sun to bask in on chilly spring mornings, and what we can’t talk the star into, we can compensate for somewhat with good strong spinning planetary cores with powerful electromagnetic fields, and also maybe wide brimmed hats. The taming process, though, just might make for real tough times for anyone trying to live anywhere near what will eventually become a true green zone. Just so you know.
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Genre Fiction
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Attenuation: Letters From The Man In The Moon