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There are strange things under the stars.

There are bigger things, stranger things, things that simply escape understanding that wait to be discovered. Yet what strangeness is such strangeness that we can already imagine? And what strangeness could we ever hope to experience that we could not imagine?

Songsworth: Aldebaran

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