Word: planet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...know we might not have any time at all, and yours was the first to be born knowing it. With each second you have after this one, you have to find a way to guarantee that time itself can live. We must choose to be custodians of this lovely planet that suckled us and led us peaceably forward with all the rest of nature for millions of years and could go on for its allotted billions more if we tell our time what to do. Otherwise, time and the earth could go out like a candle...
Hence the ambitious expedition, sometime in the 22nd century, of the Eurydice, a mile-long, billion-ton spaceship that is trying to touch base with the inhabitants of Quinta, the "fifth planet of the sixth sun" in the constellation Harpy. The earthly powers cooperate in funding and launching this enterprise because all other attempts to detect intelligent life elsewhere in the universe have failed. The old-fangled, late 20th century notion of scanning the skies for meaningful radio signals yielded nothing but static and was folly besides. The new theory favors the "window of contact," the relatively brief span during...
...imaginative physics is consistently beguiling. But the elegant planning and wondrous machines he describes fail to anticipate a simple problem: the Quintans do not want to talk. Flying high above the planet, the crew of Hermes can see signs of a highly advanced society. But attempts to communicate are met first with silence and then with hostility; unmanned probes carrying messages of peace are attacked. The earthmen begin to wonder whether the planners of their glorious mission "had invested billions and lifted mountains in order to find a civilization gone berserk...
...hate all ballads, including my own." Still, it was impossible to flourish on his own and hang in with the gang. "I felt," he says, "a more urgent necessity pulling me. Like, 'Hey, it's time to find out if you got something else to contribute here on this planet.' " Men Without Women, his first Little Steven album, released in 1982, was a New York song cycle about hard life on the city streets. The songs were fervent, and the Disciples of Soul blasted behind Van Zandt like a garage band concertizing on top of a pizza oven. Voice...
...nations, including Britain, West Germany and the Soviet Union, agreed that by 1992 they would cut back on their production of chlorofluorocarbons by 20%. Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, felt the agreement did not go far enough. He warned, "If we mess up this planet, we can't go and look for another...