Bitter Karella
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Midnight Pals: Get Your Ass to Mars
🕑 Added 2025-06-01 19:11:28 +0000 UTC[space coven]
Robert Heinlein: people, i'm afraid that the situation on earth is hopeless
Heinlein: elon musk has been ejected from the government and with him dies the dream of a utopian libertarian outpost on Mars free from the tyranny of age of consent laws
Heinlein: it's up to us now gentlemen
Heinlein: we are the ones who must get humanity to mars
Heinlein: i need answers people
Heinlein: how do we get our intrepid red-blooded space marines to mars before the forces of international communism?
HG Wells: wait what was that about age of consent laws
Heinlein: dammit herbert there's no time to argue
Heinlein: i'll tell you how we're gonna get to mars
Heinlein: we need a ragtag group of all-american teenagers building a working rocket from junk in their backyard
HG Wells: like Joe Dante's 1985 opus The Explorers?
Heinlein: Yes!
Heinlein: exactly like that!
HG Wells: i'm skeptical that a bunch of kids could build a working spaceship
Heinlein: oh yeah? you don't think american youth has the gumption, is that right, herbert?
Heinlein: or should i call you
Heinlein: COMRADE???
Heinlein: you don't believe we can conquer mars with the raw virility and can-do spirit of america's youth?
Heinlein: ray, you know a lot about mars
Heinlein: what do YOU think
Ray Bradbury: [thumbing suspenders] now i'm just a simple country writer
Bradbury: there's nothing so beautiful as the limitless vista of a child's imagination
Bradbury: back on the farm, warm summer night spent gazing at the stars, twinkling in the ether, imagining a world of possibilities, barefoot children playing hopscotch and jacks and cowboys & injuns on a distant world, man and martian, in perfect harmony, look to the effortless love of the children to see the truth
Bradbury: pepperridge farm remembers
Heinlein: ray, that's not what mars is like at all!
Heinlein: we're going to arrive as conquerors
Heinlein: and turn the RED planet into a bastian of free-market capitalism
Heinlein: as for any martians, well
Heinlein: we'll just have to destroy the planet to save it
HG Wells: i think maybe we shouldn't rely on random teenagers to build a rocket
Heinlein: oh yeah? you got a better idea, pinko?
Wells: well
Wells: what if we
Wells: uhhhh
Wells: what if we
Wells: what if we invented a metal that was lighter than air
Heinlein: a metal lighter than air?
Wells: yeah then you could just float to mars
Poe: you're all just reinventing the wheel
Poe: just take a balloon to mars
Poe: i mean, duh
Poe: you can go ANYWHERE in a balloon
Wells: oh he has a point
Comments
T. Ledoux
(also, “gumption,” heh)
T. Ledoux
I read Heinlein at a very young and impressionable age; I’ll always have a fierce love for those books. That said, none of what you say can be argued with, lol.
