a portrait of Maria
“There was a portrait of Maria centered in the star of a synthetic ruby enclosed in the message capsule. A nude portrait, naturally.”
—Alfred Bester, from The Demolished Man, 1951.
the Rainbow House of Chooka Frood
“Number 99 was an eviscerated ceramics plant. During the war a succession of blazing explosions had burst among the stock of thousands of chemical glazers, fused them, and splashed them into a wild rainbow reproduction of a lunar crater. Great splotches of magenta, violet, bice green, burnt umber, and chrome yellow were burned into the stone walls. long streams of orange, crimson, and imperial purple had erupted through windows and dooors to streak the streets and surrounding ruins with slashing brush stronkes. This became the Rainbow House of Chooka Frood.”
—Alfred Bester, from The Demolished Man, 1951.
10 billion trillion trillion carats
“Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.
The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
It’s the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.
Astronomers have decided to call the star “Lucy” after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
‘You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond,’ says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.”
—Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online science editor, Monday, 16 February, 2004. Ran into this three year old news by way of Fark. An oldie, but a goodie.
good red weather
“When de sun’s goin down on de horizon, a turtler must look out to de sunset. Supposin you havin a red sunset, and when you look back into de east, you see red above de blue. Well, dat is good weather: moderate weather or calm. Blue above de red means blusterous weather, prob’ly squally or plenty of breeze, and if you see it real gray, dat means blusterous weather, too. Red evenin sky and underneath is dark—well, dat is good red weather.”
—Peter Matthiessen, from Far Tortuga, 1975.
silver light
“See dat silver light? Make me sad, someway.
Gloomy, mon. What de old people calls de Mouth of de Night. Cause de night hungry, mon.”
—Peter Matthiessen, from Far Tortuga, 1975.
watch for de sundog
“. . . a sundog—gale-wind bird, some of de old people calls it—cause it a sign dat a hurricane is approachin. What? Well, sundog is a little color, little piece of cloud look more like a rainbow, on one side of de sun or de other. You don’t see it cept when de sun is going down and at de time of de sunrise. From July on, mostly August, September, October, you must watch for de sundog, in de mornin and in de evenin. By dat you can always tell in what direction dat hurricane is travellin. In days gone by, before dere was any wireless and all to tell’m things, de people used to use de gale-wind bird as a sign dat bad times was ahead.”
—Peter Matthiessen, from Far Tortuga, 1975.
more blue than you can imagine
“The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies. Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color—not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.”
—John Steinbeck, from East of Eden, 1952.
frantic, beseeching eyes
“As he lay in the darkness after the light was out he saw the green circle left in his eyes by the candle flame, and in its whirling, pulsing frame he saw the frantic, beseeching eyes of James Grew. He didn’t go back to sleep for a long time.”
—John Steinbeck, from East of Eden, 1952.
coat after coat of whitewash
“The old thick walls sucked in coat after coat of whitewash made with lime in salt water, which, as it dried, seemed to have a luminosity of its own.”
—John Steinbeck, from East of Eden, 1952.
A cheerful brown
“Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanos formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.”
—John Steinbeck, from East of Eden, 1952.