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Alien Nights
Or, is there life on Mars?
Long before I heard the David Bowie song many of us love so much, I had read Ray Bradbury’s famous collection, The Martian Chronicles, and I had seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the rabbit’s later, blue period, a time when he was less mischievous and more serious about his place in the Looney universe.
Bugs was a bit thicker then in appearance and far less fun. In the cartoon I’m remembering, he reminds me of my father who grudgingly took us on vacations to Florida every year and managed, always, to get us lost somewhere none of us wanted to be. Poor Dad. He’d trudge into places where he clearly wasn’t regarded well, trying to figure out which left turn he should have made, and when. These were the days before any computerized navigation system existed or had been planned. So, a paper road map or, if you were more of a planner than we were, a Road Atlas, had to do.
That we would survive it all physically was never in doubt, actually, but in that nether, psychological realm, well, who’s to say what survival means or even is?
Bugs had other problems. Once, unbeknownst to him, he dug underground and managed to come up on a rocket headed to Mars. Though he saw wondrous creatures he could never figure out or identify, it never dawned on him that he might be on another planet.
