Out
A series about Mars
My
name
is Daniel
Machado and I live in Pacific Grove, California. This
story is my "sailboat in the basement."
For those unfamiliar with the expression
it comes from the Forties and Fifties when some Englishmen were known to
build sailboats in their basements. These boats couldn't be removed, or
for that matter sailed, without first demolishing a sizable piece of the
man’s home. So why do it? Because they wanted to build a boat and their
basements were the only places available. The act of building
was more important than that of sailing. Logic be damned.
That’s how this story is with me.
I started writing it because I wanted to write something. After reading
several websites about Martian teraformation I found the notion intriguing.
I've known writing to be a good way to give ideas form so I started this
story and have over the years occasionally added to it as the mood takes
me, never really intending to publish or for that matter even finish it.
It’s just a project. A way for me to work out disjointed ideas into some
apparent form. A place to play with things. My pretend world. Like I said,
a sailboat in the basement. Unfortunately I have friends who feel that
this is some sort of literary blasphemy. Personally I doubt it.
Then my ISP tells me I’ve got a few
megs of server space coming to me as part of my Internet subscription.
Okay, I’ll play along. The rest of the world has gone web-wacky, why not
me? But, I’m not really into the whole vanity-site thing, so you guys get
this instead.
But, speaking of the obligatory vanity-site
thing: I was born in Oildale, California in the early Fifties. As a child
digging in the flowerbeds out in front of my house I remember being startled
half to death by a tremendous window shattering double thunder coming from
a bright blue sky, and how the Air Force insisted for days that this was
not
caused by Chuck Yeager going twice the speed of sound for the first time.
Edwards Air Force Base is in the same county as Oildale just over fifty
miles away. I remember my father reading me the front page article about
John Glenn's fiery reentry, and how as a teenager I sat screaming at Walter
Cronkite to "shut up" so that I could hear Neil Armstrong talk in my living
room all the way from the Moon while the rest of my family yelled me
down so that they could hear Walter. And I also remember throwing the TV
Guide across the room when after five minuets of channel flipping I realized
that the Apollo XIII broadcast had been canceled.
I love Space, always
have.
After two overseas posts in the Army
I finished my service up in Washington State and then went home. I moved
from Oildale to Pacific Grove in the mid-Eighties because while Oildale
has lots of oil, it has neither tall trees nor an ocean; and as you might
imagine Pacific Grove has both.
My current day job is installing computer
and telephone networks in and around Monterey, California -- a job I assure
you I shall not quit to become a writer. And there you have it. -dm
