Meridiani Messenger by Stuart Atkinson

(2 ratings) Rate this Story (5 best) 1 2 3 4 5

Arthur C Clarke placed enigmatic alien Monoliths on the Earth, the Moon and Europa, and in Jupiter orbit too. Faye's put one on Mars. Makes sense! It's become famous all over the planet, and a Mecca-like place of pilgrimage for natives and Earthers alike. There are no bone-wielding apes circling it of course (unless you count that Russian team who were here last week. Party animals or what!), or brilliant arc-lamps trained upon it, but it really is quite beautiful. I hope you all get a chance to go and see it for yourself some day. I'll definitely send you a pic, or of course you could just MarsGoogle for one yourself.

Obviously I didn't have anything to do with Faye's Monolith, she made it years ago, very soon after arriving on Mars, but I did help her with her second most famous piece, which she created right here, in Meridiani, just past the Base, out towards Victoria Crater.

In fact, thanks to Faye's new work, "VC" has become something of a mecca for artists.. Half a dozen people – taking breaks from their regular work – are out here right now, as I write this, working on their own creations which they intend to display at Victoria - actually, to be precise, along its rim; somehow, when no-one was looking, VC's rim has become a kind of "art gallery" for martian artists, with exhibits and pieces popping up everywhere.

So what would you see if you came out here? Well, there are quite a few abstract pieces – amongst them a pair of cairn-like piles of twisted meteorites, supposed to represent "The Spirit of Exploration" and "Martian Sunset"; intriguing in a "what the **** is that supposed to be?!" kind of way – but most seem to be based on famous characters from Mars exploration, real life and fictional. Walking around the Rim – as many people do now – anti-clockwise, following the "Opportunity Trail", treading in the long-faded wheel-tracks of the old Mars Exploration Rover that showed this incredible place to human eyes for the first time, you pass dozens of statues or busts of men and women who, in some way, shaped and now inhabit our collective cultural vision of Mars.

The first familiar figure to greet you as you stalk around Victoria's jagged, ragged edge, heading south and west, is that of HG Wells. Surrounded as he is by Mars' amber, tan and ochre rocks, peering down quizzically into the depths of Victoria Crater, as if staring down into the smoking crater on Horsfall Common which was the beach-head of the martian invasion in his War Of The Worlds, Wells looks quite at home out here on the Meridiani plain, and his dapper suit and neatly-trimmed moustache look strangely appropriate.

Walking on, next, and appropriately enough, for it was his alleged observations that prompted Wells to write his wonderful novel, you pass the tall, thin statue of an equally- nattily-dressed Percival Lowell. The artist responsible for this statue has done a remarkable job. Depicted holding and staring adoringly at an umber-hued globe of Mars, criss-crossed with his (in)famous canals, Lowell appears very distinguished, but troubled, as if battling some inner turmoil.