Fifty thousand German miles up in the ether lies the island of Levania. The road to it from here or from it to this earth is seldom open. When the way is open, it is easy for the demon kind, but for transporting men it is assuredly most difficult and fraught with the greatest danger to life.
Johannes Kepler: Somnium.
[2]
I was admiring in an ecstasy the beauty of so mingled a coloring when suddenly I felt my entrails stirred in the same way a man feels them stir when he is lifted up by a pulley. I was about to open the door to find out the cause of this sensation, but, as I was stretching out my hand, I looked through the hole in the floor of my box and saw my Tower already far below me; and my little castle in the air thrusting upwards against my feet showed me in a twinkling Toulouse disappearing into the earth. This prodigy surprised me, not because of the suddenness of the flight, but because of the terrible emotion of the human reason at the success of a design which had appalled me even in the imagination.
Cyrano de Bergerac: Voyage to the Sun.
[3.1]
First Herald: The brethren of the Rosie-Crosse have their Colledge within a mile o' the Moone: a Castle i'th'ayre that runs upon wheeles with a wing'd lanthorne—
Printer: I ha' seen't in print.
Second Herald: All the phantasticall creatures you can thinke of, are there.
Factor: 'Tis to be hop'd there are women there then?
First Herald: And zealous women, that will out-grone, the groning wives of Edinburgh.
Factor: And Lovers as phantasticke as ours?
Second Herald: But none that will hang themselves for Love, or eate candles ends, or drinke to their Mistresse-eyes, till their owne bid 'hem good night; as the Sublunary Lovers doe.
— Ben Jonson: Newes From The New World Discover'd In The Moone.
Ariosto 34.67 thru beginning 35
seven parts fronted by quotations: five acts, the third in three parts
[second:]
I was admiring in an ecstasy the beauty of so mingled a coloring when suddenly I felt my entrails stirred in the same way a man feels them stir when he is lifted up by a pulley. I was about to open the door to find out the cause of this sensation, but, as I was stretching out my hand, I looked through the hole in the floor of my box and saw my Tower already far below me; and my little castle in the air thrusting upwards against my feet showed me in a twinkling Toulouse disappearing into the earth. This prodigy surprised me, not because of the suddenness of the flight, but because of the terrible emotion of the human reason at the success of a design which had appalled me even in the imagination.
— Cyrano de Bergerac: The Voyage To The Sun.
[first:]
Fifty thousand German miles up in the ether lies the island of Levania. The road to it from here or from it to this earth is seldom open. When the way is open, it is easy for the demon kind, but for transporting men it is assuredly most difficult and fraught with the greatest danger to life.
— Johannes Kepler: Somnium.
[As a point of design: the photoreproduction of a page from d'Urfey's opera as a title.]
Scene changes to the first, and Discovers a Bright Luminous Country, wherein Gonzales and Diego appear. A Machin hanging in the Air at a small distance...
—Thomas D'Urfey: Wonders In The Sun, Or, The Kingdom Of The Birds. [1706.]
Ming [to his guards]: Take Zarkov to the laboratory! Give him everything he requires — except his freedom... .
—Flash Gordon
Burton, Anatomy, ii.53 and vicinity: green men.
It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in space…I had not reckoned on any thing like this. I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt—as if I were disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey. It was like the beginning of a dream.
—H. G. Wells: The First Men In The Moon.
[The Astronomer exclaims, then retracts his expression of alarm:]
Astronomer: I'm sorry…I guess it was nothing…a sudden light reflection, it startled me.
Doctor Mason: No doubt a comet or a meteor.
Astronomer: No…it seemed to be a drillshaped thing…revolving…It must have been my imagination… . But it makes me realize how…desperately alone the Earth is…hanging in space like a speck of food, flosting in the ocean…sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by…
Doctor Mason: Oh come now…
Astronomer: Time will tell, Doctor Mason. We can only wait…and wonder…wonder how…wonder when…
Tom Graeff: Teenagers From Outer Space.
[Zolok watches impatiently as Manyus wields the controls of the apparatus—then interrupts with an exclamation]
Zolok: Manyus! I must have more power!
Manyus: I have already discharged enough electricity into the atmosphere to destroy a hundred cities…
Zolok: I'll have this [—?—spastic] condenser hold enough to destroy the world! if I desire it…
Sheehan/Graneman/D'Usseau: The Lost City.
Mars…the one planet that shows evidence of being habitable…its distance from the Earth varies from between sixtyfive and thirtyfive million miles…it's about half the size of Earth…if you'll notice, Mars has polar caps over the North and South poles…between those polar caps is one of the biggest controversies about Mars: the crisscrossing of a network of canals that is geometrically perfect…many believe that these canals are used as part of a vast irrigation system, by which water, which is rare on Mars, is pumped from the polar caps to supply the needs of the rest of the planet. Temperature varies [etc.] –The red color of Mars indicates that most of the oxygen has been eaten up, in rusting and oxidizing the rocks on the surface. —Yes, the conditions for life do exist on Mars. But unless somehow it can renew itself, the first Earth explorers will find only the sad remnants of a civilization that was brighter than that of the Earth…and then returned to dust.
—Planetarium speech of Tommy Kirk, in Mars Needs Women.
Lieutenant Turner [wonderingly]: Twenty-six million miles from Earth…and the little dolls are just the same.
Charles Beaumont [after a story by Ben Hecht]: Queen Of Outer Space.
I should mention one other thing I saw in the palace of the King of the Moon. It was a large mirror suspended over a shallow tank. If you got into the tank, you could hear everything that was being said in the Earth, and if you looked in the mirror, you could see what was going on anywhere in the world, as clearly as if you were there yourself.
Lucian of Samosata: True History.
[I should mention one more thing I saw in the palace f Endymion, the king of the Moon. It was a large mirror, suspended over a shallow tank. If you got into the tank, you could hear everything that was being said on the Earth, and see in the mirror anything going on anywhere in the world, as clearly as if you were there yourself...][115—200 A.D.]
The Venal Engineer: It ain't true! There can't be another world in the bowels of the Moon…
Roy Hamilton: CatWomen Of The Moon.
[you could, for instance, play the dialogue, under; or quote the scene completely—it's not like the rights would be expensive]
Needs something from Godard. E.g. from Alphaville. The opening lines.
Ming [flinging the lever that launches the fiery projectile]: I'll crush all those who dare to balk me in my determination to conquer the universe!
Dale [seeing it in flight, throwing an arm before her eyes]: O Flash it's terrible!
Flash [grimly reflective]: Ming's first harbinger of death...
—Purple Death From Outer Space.
[cf. also the scene between Ming and his pet scientist, roughly at the twelveminute mark of chapter one]
It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in spaceÖI had not reckoned on any thing like this. I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I feltóas if I were disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream
H. G. Wells: The First Men in the Moon.
Dramatic Chorus.
The two babes alternate dramatic readings.
[Holding the books up before their faces. Visual attribution.]
First Babe
I should mention one other thing I saw in the palace of the King of the Moon. It was a large mirror suspended over a shallow tank. If you got into the tank, you could hear everything that was being said in the Earth, and if you looked in the mirror, you could see what was going on anywhere in the world, as clearly as if you were there yourself...
[Lucian of Samosata: True History.]
Second Babe
The great Magitian Merlin had deuiz'd,
By his deepe science, and hell-dreaded might,
A looking glasse, right wondrously aguiz'd,
Whose virtues through the wyde world soone were solemniz'd.
It vertue had, to shew in perfect sight,
What euer thing was in the world contayned,
Betwixt the lowest earth and heauens hight,
So that it to the looker appertaynd;
What euer foe had wrought, or frend had faynd,
Therein discouered was, ne ought mote pas,
Ne ought in secret from the same remaynd;
For thy it round and hollow shaped was,
Like to the world it selfe, and seem'd a world of glas.
Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queen, III.2, 18-19.
[An Elizabethan expert to provide a recording of this? to fix pronunciation.]
Cf. also Chaucer, Squire's Tale, 132-142.
[after Nicolson]
Milton:
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seem of ancient pile;
[etc.]
fronting [7] [Dis]
Serviss:
Was there ever such a situation as ours? Cast away in a place wild and wonderful beyond description, millions of miles from all human aid and sympathy, millions of miles from the world that had “given us birth! I could, in bitterness of spirit, have laughed at the suggestion that there was any hope for us. And yet, at that very moment, not only was there hope, but there was even the certainty of deliverance. But, unknown to us, it lay in the brain of the incomparable man who had brought us hither.
