The Perseverance Rover on Mars

What a technological wonder!

Bravo NASA for pulling it off, landing on Mars ain't easy.

I read this morning something that delighted me, in the Month of the Woman here in the US. They have named the landing site after one of the most talented sci-fi authors of the last century. A woman that worked in near-obscurity, writing amazing prophetic fiction, Octavia E. Butler.

NASA has named the landing site of the agency's Perseverance rover "Octavia E. Butler Landing," after the science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. The landing location is marked with a star in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

MRO's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft. The University of Arizona in Tucson provided and operates HiRISE.

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

For those of you who don't know who she was, here is a bit of background.

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Extremely shy as a child, Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.
She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library.

Readers praise Butler for her unflinching exposition of human flaws, which she depicts with striking realism.

 

Here is a list of her work if you are interested in reading some of it.

Patternist series
Patternmaster (Doubleday, 1976)
Mind of My Mind (Doubleday, 1977)
Survivor (Doubleday, 1978)
Wild Seed (Doubleday, 1980)
Clay's Ark (St. Martin's Press, 1984)
Seed to Harvest (Grand Central Publishing 2007; omnibus excluding Survivor)
Xenogenesis series
Dawn (Warner, 1987)
Adulthood Rites (Warner, 1988)
Imago (Warner, 1989)
Xenogenesis (Guild America Books, 1989) (an omnibus edition of Dawn, Adulthood Rites, & Imago)
Lilith's Brood (Warner, 2000) (another omnibus edition of Dawn, Adulthood Rites, & Imago)
Parable series (also called the Earthseed series)
Parable of the Sower (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1993)
Parable of the Talents (Seven Stories Press, 1998)
Standalone novels
Kindred (Doubleday, 1979)
Fledgling (Seven Stories Press, 2005)
Short story collections
Bloodchild and Other Stories (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1995; Seven Stories Press, 2005 including "Amnesty" and "The Book of Martha")
Unexpected Stories (2014, including "A Necessary Being" and "Childfinder")

In the Parable Series she describes a future overrun by "Make America Great Again" right-wing Christians, with a president astoundingly like Trump. If that doesn't get you interested, what does? The beauty of it is how a supposedly powerless single black woman overcomes all that and changes the world for the better.

 

Reading her work was very moving. Then I re-read it, and re-read the entire catalog of her stuff just last year.

It was great to see her thusly honored!

That's a great line about a good reason for being hermitic. The mainstream does tend to pollute one's soul and mind with greed for material goods we do not need.