The Dope On Mars

Somebody had to get the human angle on this trip ... but what was humane about sending me?


excerpt

My agent was the one who got me the job of going along to write up the first trip to Mars. He was always getting me things like that--appearances on TV shows, or mentions in writers' magazines. If he didn't sell much of my stuff, at least he sold me.


"It'll be the biggest break a writer ever got," he told me, two days before blastoff. "Oh, sure there'll be scientific reports on the trip, but the public doesn't want them; they want the human slant on things."


"But, Louie," I said weakly, "I'll probably be locked up for the whole trip. If there are fights or accidents, they won't tell me about them."


"Nonsense," said Louie, sipping carefully at a paper cup of scalding coffee. "It'll be just like the public going along vicariously. They'll identify with you."


"But, Louie," I said, wiping the dampness from my palms on the knees of my trousers as I sat there, "how'll I go about it? A story? An article? A you-are-there type of report? What?"


Louie shrugged. "So keep a diary. It'll be more intimate, like."


"But what if nothing happens?" I insisted hopelessly.


Louie smiled. "So you fake it."


I got up from the chair in his office and stepped to the door. "That's dishonest," I pointed out.


"Creative is the word," Louie said.


So I went on the first trip to Mars. And I kept a diary. This is it. And it is honest. Honest it is.