Word: earthness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...idea that there might be intelligent life on Mars took root in the 17th century, after Johannes Kepler developed his theory of planetary motion, which helped rebut the old Ptolemaic idea of an earth-centered system of celestial bodies. Kepler's ideas supported the Copernican theory that the sun is the true center of man's universe. Its implications were profound. If the earth is only one of several planets orbiting the sun, could it be the only one to contain life? Newton, Huygens and Voltaire all speculated on the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the solar...
...scientific techniques improved, astronomers saw enough to become increasingly convinced that most planets were inhospitable to life. Yet Mars continued to provoke serious speculation, largely because it showed so many characteristics that seemed fascinatingly similar to those of earth. The red planet turned out to have an atmosphere, albeit an extremely thin one. The tilt of its axis (about 24°) is approximately the same as the earth's, thus creating seasonal changes. Its huge white polar caps suggest the presence of ice, and therefore water-a prerequisite for life as human beings know it. It also has large...
...simulated tests on earth, however, such lowly forms of life as bacteria have survived in a Marslike environment. Moreover, some biologists theorize, life could have evolved on Mars by entirely unfamiliar biological processes. That does not mean that scientists expect to find strange, advanced beings on Mars. But they do not preclude the possibility of primitive life unlike anything ever seen on earth...
...doubtful" manuscripts. I couldn't keep them in my desk because whenever I wasn't there my flat could be broken into and searched and my manuscripts confiscated, as happened with Solzhenitsyn and many others. My writing desk, in fact, had no drawers at all. The Russian earth itself served as my desk and my safe. It became a real mania for me to be able to see my writing published in the form in which I had written it. I wanted to see it just once, and then they could do what they liked with...
...have hope, at least. In any case, these are not the words of Kuznetsov but of a quite different author. Not a Soviet author and not a Western author, not a Red one and not a White one, but just an author living in this 20th century on this earth. And what is more, a writer who has made a desperate effort to be in this century, an honest writer who wants to associate himself with those who strive for humanity in the present wild, wild, wild life of this mad, mad world...