Aurora

by Kim Stanley Robinson

make-or-break

orbital mechanics

N-body gravitational problem

we were blowing their minds.

Mandelbrot paisleys,

octillion

Threats, from the very civilization that had built us and sent us out to Tau Ceti.

hormesis

Getting chosen was a huge life success, a religious experience.

axis mundi,

the two-body Kepler problem,

zettaflops

Atmospheric mining for fuel

That seemed to represent not just our best chance, but our only chance.

Thus the long years of pinballing around the sun, shedding speed, worrying.

zoo devolution

It was a joy to serve.

coronal mass ejections,

The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air,

Warp and weft.

“For most of our lives we were moving one million times faster than this.”

fuschia

Cavafy:

Durrell’s

Now that we’re out, I plan to enjoy it!”

herringbone sky the same as a mackerel sky?”

evolutionary pressure.

the common era year 2910, they are calling it a five-thousand-year project.

lifeway

diurnal rhythm,

neap tides

“Well, the food here is awfully good, you have to admit.”

Dawn on Earth. Aurora was the goddess of dawn; this is the thing itself.

Just a big biome! Hold it together!

leopard shark,

NASA/Ames,

“The City” from Justine by Lawrence Durrell, copyright © 1957, renewed © 1985 by Lawrence George Durrell.

“The City” by C. P. Cavafy, translation copyright © Olympios Katsiaouni,

“Simplicity” from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson,

“Tyrannies” by William Bronk

Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and 2312.

the Sierra Nevada Research Institute.

ONE WAY by S.

J. Morden