Thursday, September 21, 2023

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Discovery 52714.

In Aurelia, Lafferty says at first that the Shining World is "three hundred million to three hundred and sixty million kilometers" away; but actually "it's about one hundred and sixty-five thousand times as distant..." which would make it 5.2 to 6.3 light years. The only two stars in that range are Barnard's Star & Luhman 16. The latter object (two brown dwarves), however, were only discovered in 2013, or more than thirty years after the book was published. Seeing as how the former has had not one, not two, but three ghost planets to date, i think that makes it the Laffertiest of Laffertian stars. Izdubar before i heard.

Poem.

"I do not know which is the most urgent, that you should repent of your fiscal outrages, or your aesthetic, or your intellectual, or your practical, or your moral." --Aurelia

The Taxi.

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