The Voyager Record: A Transmission

by Anthony Michael Morena

Late summer 1977: two identical robotic spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral. Their divergent paths through the solar system take them past gas giants, icy moons, asteroid belts, and eventually into the unknown of interstellar space. There, they will continue to travel on forever, the fastest moving objects ever created by humans. The Voyagers carry a message from Earth, a phonograph record plated with gold containing 27 songs, 118
images, and greetings in 55 languages meant to summarize all life on our planet for the extraterrestrials who might one day encounter the crafts. The Voyager Record: A Transmission is the record of that record: a history in fragments exploring how legendary astronomer Carl Sagan and his team attempted to press the entire human race into a single groove. Combining elements of poetry, flash fiction, and essay, Anthony Michael Morena
creates a collage of music, observation, humor, and alienation. Giving the 38-year-old original playlist a B-side update, Morena’s The Voyager Record calls out to its namesake across the billions of miles of emptiness: Send more answers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Poetry, Science

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 2016

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 5* of five

THE VOYAGER RECORD review is live at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud. My 5 stars are for Rose Metal Press, who made beautiful art with Author Morena. This sui generis book is a reminder that #ReadingIsResistance to forgetting that once we, as a nation, set goals that united us instead of counted coup against each other.

If we see farther than ever before, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants who believed in working towards something instead of against everything.

[Arthur Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scattershot collection of trivia, creative nonfiction, and musings re: the Golden Records currently floating around aboard Voyagers 1 & 2 somewhere in space. Bits of humor, social criticism, and memoir are sprinkled in throughout, making for a fun and interesting if not quite cohesive read.

My favorite parts were those considering the values and reasoning behind the media selected for the records, the inevitable disconnect between what life was like on Earth in 1977 and whenever the records are discovered by intelligent life, and the vignettes speculating on how these recipients might react to our little message in a bottle. The author has a tendency to ramble on about music and attempts an analogy between aliens in a foreign country and actual alien lifeforms, but for the most part these entries never really add much to the proceedings.

Who knows what will come of mankind's conceited crack at making contact? If nothing else, we've got this book.

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book length essay/meditation on the golden record that went into space on the Voyager space capsule. I was fascinated by the record itself, and what NASA and its experts thought would be the best representations of humanity to send into space. There were two parts that didn't work--fictionalizations of Carl Sagan's life and these brief segues into the author's life in Israel. There were far too few of the latter and there was a much larger significance being implied by them that never came to pass.

Still, it is an interesting question--what would you choose to represent humanity?

[Ben]

It is a rumination on connection, and believing that there is something more than this, us, whatever, or wherever, it is we think we are. It is also about pop culture, the loss of heroes and fathers, and Morena's own displacement and discoveries in moving from Brooklyn to Tel Aviv, an alien life force all his own.

[Akin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enigmatic, beguiling, contemplative.

I suppose the central question in this epigrammatic short book is, what would we want to say about ourselves to an alien life form, should such a thing exist? What do we value? What do we place precedence upon? What would we include?

Each of these questions has an obverse, evidently. And that's just as interesting.

Occasionally, the book narrows down its scope to the individual level - specifically, the bewilderingly multifaceted experience of living in ISR/PAL without historical or political roots in the country. And I suppose that in this context, the same questions apply, just much more keenly.

FWIW, I think that, more interesting than what people say about themselves is *how* they say what they have to say about themselves.

The Voyager mission is a fascinating experiment. It's also somewhat grandiloquent, no? But that's us.

If the aliens have (had?) any sense, they'd eavesdrop on us for a while before determining whether to pop in or not.

(Incidentally: I suspect the reason we go haring after E-T life is because they won't come looking for us. And we know it.)

Recommended.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought this on a whim at Moe’s, and now it’s one of my favorite short-form books. Amazing little poetic ruminations on the record’s creation, Sagan’s life, what sort of beings might encounter Voyager, and a little personal reflection thrown in for good measure. The whole thing is slightly bizarre and off-kilter and I love it.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to explain why I like this so much. Space, life, history, poetry, music—all held together by the voyager record, which is in itself a compilation. Anyway. Loved this.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I reviewed this already. Maybe the cold infinite depth of outer space swallowed the review.

The Voyager Record is an adventure that takes all the elements of earthly society and examines each element for what it is. Our music, our art, our many languages and customs, all of these things seen for what they are if they were encountered by an alien culture.

Most beautiful of all, the zoom in right on the life and love affairs of Carl Sagan himself. Imagine if the sprawling forever of space was packed into a beautiful chunk of art you could hold in your hand.

Yeah, it has been.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book that reveals new secrets with each rereading. Simply my favorite.

[T.D. Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Voyager mission, and more specifically the Golden Records they carried with them, provide for Millennials an intriguing problem: what does it mean to be the first generation to be born after the launch of craft that carry what was purported to be the cultural story of humanity? (As a late Gen-Xer, I'm aware that most of us didn't have much input on the story either, but at least we were represented.) Anthony Michael Morena's collection of lyrical essays examines the story behind that story, who chose the representative music and languages and why, and the budding relationship between Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. These essays cause us too to question now only how we should view the Golden Record but also how we should see any story that claims to be in any way global. A fascinating read, delicately balanced between history and Morena's reflections.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was merely "okay" for me.

I wasn't blown away by this book (although there was one passage that I did really like), and I was hoping so much for more.

The Voyager Record is our message to extraterrestrial life, a topic that is interesting enough by itself, but the author only really makes it sound "meh".

If anything, it was easy to get through. Some of the things brought up were interesting, but they were only brought up and I wish they could've been expanded upon.

I also wouldn't categorize this book as poetry.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7, Experimental writing is always an adventure and sometimes it really does not work, but thankfully Morena's The Voyager Record is fully accessible and provides musings on the ever wonder inspiring Voyager I and II. A combo of poetry, musings, and little moments of fiction inspired real events it was a nice place to go and have a moment of wonder.

[lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of interesting info about the record, lots of weird anecdotes from the author. My favorite one: “I don’t know when it was that people stopped liking the mixtapes I was making.”

I hope I never know that feeling.

[Jeff Laughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am proud to have read this and enamored with its existence. Well done, Anthony. Can’t wait to see what the next book holds.

[Laura Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually really loved this. Studied it for my Reading/Writing class. I will likely be reading this again.

[alexbraus · Rating 5 out of 5]

quick read. what songs would you put on a new voyager golden record?

[Arnaldur Stefánsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are 55 greetings but what does it say about a planet if the people there don't know how to say hello to one another?

[Jordyn Damato · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was alright

[emma rowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

erm

[Kurtis Darby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a taut debut from a promising new author. Morena approaches the novel in a new and unique way. His post-modern style breathes new life into the form as he takes as his subject The Voyager Record (a phonograph record that was launched into space in 1977) and allows it to take his reader to outer-space and Earth, the microcosm of the narrator's life and the camera continually zooms out to capture humanity and its various cultures. With the minimal sentence structure Morena uses, it's less what's said than what is implied between the sentences and passages like the reader is invited into the narrator's confidence for his jokes, his judgments, his musings. The reader can't help feel thoughtful after reading The Voyager Record and to feel he's just read a work that is insisting (rightfully so) its own importance in modern literature. I can't wait to see what Anthony Michael Morena does next.

[Marni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely one of a kind. I don't know even know how I'd categorize it. It's a kind of beef stew of science, science fiction, personal essay and history, about the record that traveled into space to demonstrate to any aliens information about the human race. I learned so much about a topic I didn't even know I was interested in. And what is really cool is that sometimes you can't tell the science/history from the science fiction. The book is set up that each thought that the author has is a separate page. One sentence of fact about one of the tracks might be followed by fictionalized account of a historical moment about the creation of the record. You never know what you will get. Truly a unique read.

[Melissa Rotkiewicz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, the pro is that it was a quick read. The con is that it wasn't even worth the day it took me. It was a weird concept - actually, maybe that's the problem - I'm not actually sure what the concept was. The book felt diaorganized, jumbled, a stream of consciousness that wasn't entertaining in a Kurt Vonnegut kind of way, but rather diainteresing in an annoying, self-indulgent kind of way. I would certainly not recommend this book.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clever, thought provoking, funny, immensely enjoyable. Thoughts about how we (the USA) sees itself in the universe or wishes to be seen and meditations on how others (well why not) might react to our golden little disc of information.

[Jenna · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book has a very narrow audience, and i know i'm not included. the basic facts about the record were interesting, but the stream of consciousness commentary completely lost me. disorganized.