One of my favorite science fiction authors passed away yesterday evening. Chapter 9 of the Martian Chronicles, "The Green Morning", is possibly the most meaningful science fiction pieces ever for me, which I read multiple times over during youth. The specter of thousands of trees growing overnight thoroughly enchants the imagination.
It was a green morning.
As far as he could see, the trees were standing up against the sky. Not one tree,
not two, not a dozen, but the thousands he had planted in seed and sprout. And not little
trees, no, not saplings, not little tender shoots, but great trees, huge trees, trees as tall as
ten men, green and green and huge and round and full, trees shimmering their metallic
leaves, trees whispering, trees in a line over hills, lemon-trees, redwoods and mimosas
and oaks and elms and aspens, cherry, maple, ash, apple, orange, eucalyptus, stung by a
tumultuous rain, nourished by alien and magical soil and, even as he watched, throwing
out new branches, popping open new buds.
"Impossible!" cried Mr. Benjamin Driscoll.
But the valley and the morning were green.
And the air!
All about, like a moving current, a mountain river, came the new air, the oxygen
blowing from the green trees. You could see it shimmer high in crystal billows. Oxygen,
fresh, pure, green, cold oxygen turning the valley into a river delta. In a moment the town
doors would flip wide, people would run through the new miracle of oxygen, sniffing,
gusting in lungfuls of it, cheeks pinking with it, noses frozen with it, lungs revivified,
hearts leaping, and worn bodies lifted into a dance.
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll took one long deep drink of green water air and fainted.
Before he woke again five thousand new trees had climbed up into the yellow
sun.
The Green Morning
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| Requiescat in pace |
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