This is a remix of “Tau Ceti Center” by the Finnish composer and keyboard player Kalle Kovisto. The mix moves in the moods of ’80′s alt pop and Trentemøller with a dash of early Chemical Brothers.

Check out also the original track.

We set out to seek one thing and find another.

Given that the colonists had been here for more than half a century, it was striking how much they had managed to live without. There were no large structures in orbit; no evidence of local spaceflight within the system. Only a few comsats girdled the planet, and given the lack of large-scale industrialisation on the surface, it was doubtful whether they could be repaired or replaced if any were damaged. It would be a simple matter to disable or confuse those that remained, if that fitted in with the as yet unformulated plan. (Alastair Reynolds 2000.)

Songsworth: Approaching Delta Pavonis

What is a world? A piece of rock? A place to live? An entity? Who are we to know?

We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. (Stanislaw Lem 1961.)

Songsworth: Solaris

The seafarer’s prayer, for those who cross the sea of seas, the sea of stars.

Hail, thou Star of ocean,
Portal of the sky !
Ever Virgin Mother
Of the Lord most high !

Oh ! by Gabriel’s Ave,
Uttered long ago,
Eva’s name reversing,
Stablish peace below.

Break the captive’s fetters ;
Light on blindness pour ;
All our ills expelling,
Every bliss implore.

Show thyself a Mother ;
Offer Him our sighs,
Who for us Incarnate
Did not thee despise.

Virgin of all virgins !
To thy shelter take us :
Gentlest of the gentle !
Chaste and gentle make us.

Still, as on we journey,
Help our weak endeavor ;
Till with thee and Jesus
We rejoice forever.

Through the highest heaven,
To the Almighty Three,
Father, Son, and Spirit,
One same glory be. Amen.

Songsworth: Stella Maris

Gentian shatterlings of the House of Flowers travel the Galaxy to gather more memories and wisdom than one single human being could ever accumulate.

They were suspended in the atmosphere, each floating in a neutrally buoyant impasse bubble. The ships varied in dimension from the same size as Dalliance, five or six kilometres in length, to vessels in the same medium-size class as Silver Wings of Morning, twenty or thirty kilometres from end to end. One dagger of a ship was full fifty kilometres long; its red and white dazzle markings identified it as a Redeemer needle-craft. It looked impressive, but most of that ship would have been taken up with propulsion and field-generating equipment, with only a few cubic metres of living space somewhere near its middle. (Alastair Reynolds 2008.)

Songsworth: Campion’s Flower

Oubliette is a place to remember.

The zoku colony is near the prow of the city, in the Dust District, just above where the Atlas Quiet prepare Martian sand to bear the weight of the city. It is easy to see where the colony’s boundary lies: beneath the red dust clouds the wide avenues with their belle époque fronts and cherry trees give way to fairy-tale castles of diamond, like mathematics given physical form. (Hannu Rajaniemi 2010.)

Songsworth: Quantum Thief

The place he came from had no voice. It was the silent planet.

And then I see the night sky. The greater part of it is very like ours, though the depths are blacker and the stars brighter; but something that no terrestrial analogy will enable you fully to picture is happening in the west. Imagine the Milky Way magnified – the Milky Way seen through our largest telescope on the clearest night. And then imagine this, not painted across the zenith, but rising like a constellation behind the mountaintops – a dazzling necklace of lights brilliant as planets, slowly heaving itself up till it fills a fifth of the sky and now leaves a belt of blackness between it and the horizon. (C.S. Lewis 1938.)

Songsworth: Silent Planet