Word: cosmos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Resting rock-like on the twin foundations of hindsight and inevitability, Road to the Stars is pretty dull entertainment. The future is offered as a fantastic but closed book. The invasion of the cosmos isn't as exciting as Walt Disney or George Pal might make it. More interesting is the account of the early struggles of the late Soviet creator (in 1903) of the multiple-stage rocket, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a schoolteacher "as modest as he was great." Half-deaf himself, Tsiolkovsky was able to gain no other ears than those of his young students until the October Revolution...
...layer-enveloped body. He is hurtling into the inky empyrean where the sun's rays give no light, where there is no such thing as height, where there is no up and no down -where, if he drops his guard for an instant, the irresistible forces of the cosmos will destroy...
...These people," he continues, "are often very concerned about their own identity, who they are, and if Harvard has any meaning to this identity. Most of them view their problem in physically overwhelming terms, that of ordering their cosmos, of finding their place in the the universe. Sometimes there are other questions, such as "Am I a homosexual?' but these are only sub-forms; the main question is asked in cosmological terms. When they do come back to Harvard the reaction to these questions might be summarized, 'I still wonder about all that, but it doesn't matter as much...
...rivalry with the U.S.: "What country has the largest number of people getting a higher education? Answer: the Soviet Union. What country sent the first Sputniks into the cosmos? Answer: those were Socialist Sputniks. Who wants to overtake whom in science? Answer: the U.S. would like to overtake the Soviet Union." Then, looking down at LIFE photographer Lisa Larsen, he added: "But don't misunderstand me. There is an American girl standing in front. There may be other Americans, too. I don't want to hurt anyone's national feelings. Americans, British-all are good people...
...fall of practically everybody, delivered in a tone that wavers between a yawp and a whimper. At the GHQ of the San Francisco poets, a tiny joint on Grant Avenue known simply as The Place, the non-squares were invited to gather on Sunday afternoons to "snarl at the cosmos, praise the unsung, defy the order." Poet Rexroth first carried the snarls into the jazz clubs last winter. "Poetry," he argued, "is a dying art in modern civilization. Poetry and jazz together return the poet to his audience...