Author: Andrew Becraft

Author, poet, and technologist. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Brothers Brick.

Mousterian Dawn

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Poetry deserves a cheesy science-fiction chaser. An original sci-fi short story follows…

Doris McDonald lived in a rent-controlled apartment on the eighty-fifth floor of a building overlooking the Mare Imbrium. After retiring from the observatory with a government pension, she could live comfortably, well compensated for the fact that her body – weakened after decades serving science up here in the sky – could never go home. She chose to live frugally, however, her only luxury a pair of GeneCorp® NeanderClones™ shipped up from below.

She could hear the female, Polly, humming as she washed up after serving dinner. The tune was in a scale unlike anything in the complete library of world music built into the apartment. Polly’s singing always made the hair stand up on the back of Doris’ neck.

It’s not that she was afraid of her ‘Clones – attacks on their Modern masters were a thing of the past, ever since the company had begun neutering the males before delivery. In moments of real panic, shock collars artfully disguised as Celtic torques could be activated at the touch of a button. The anthropological anachronism annoyed only scholars of ancient history. NeanderClone owners had nothing to fear.

Read the complete story after the jump! Keep reading…

Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-134 ascent highlights

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With or without a musical soundtrack, there’s something inherently stirring about watching a spacecraft lift off into orbit.

In this case, it’s the very last launch for Space Shuttle Endeavour. Thanks to all the cameras designed to ensure the Columbia tragedy never recurs, we can watch the launch from just about every angle.

Renovating Building 112

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Workmen are remodeling our office.
     They gather by the dozen
          to eat breakfast – sock caps low
over foreheads, face masks slung
     around necks. One tells a joke
          I can’t hear, and their laughter
rumbles over plastic chairs, cash registers,
     condiments, the salad bar.
          From my corner booth I can see
cranes that tower over evergreens
          marked with bright pink ribbons
               for the chainsaw. I look back
and they’re gone – nothing left
     but napkins stacked neatly
          on the center of the table.

I wrote this poem almost exactly four years ago, when I frequently stopped for coffee or breakfast in a Microsoft building between my bus stop and my own building. My product group has moved to another satellite campus since then, but I was back in Building 112 this morning for a meeting and overheard a team of corporate movers swapping stories about their accident-prone supervisor. I finished my coffee, looked up, and they were gone. I immediately thought of this poem.

I owe the poem’s current form and other improvements to feedback from David Wagoner while he was the Poet in Residence at Richard Hugo House.

JFK on the key to our future on earth

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50 years ago today, John F. Kennedy spoke before congress and set a remarkable vision for the nation with the famous words, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

(Space.com has the full speech.)

Side note: $30 million for nuclear rockets? Interesting to see which aspects of Kennedy’s vision panned out — like the moon landing — and which didn’t.