(urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned by Rudesind

[Dave Lebling]

I'm really fairly amazed at the level of nit-pickery over this question. Let
us cast our minds back to the thrilling days of yesteryear (the late 70s),
when Wolfe wrote SotT. There was no internet on which you could look up all
the thousands of then-unreleased Apollo program pictures, there were a few
places you could find pictures in hardcopy (Life -- already moribund,
National Geographic, a few coffee table books, etc.). As an SF fan, I'm sure
he had resources such as the F&SF cover -- or not, he may not be a pack rat.

It seems quite obvious that the description he wrote is based on his
memories of various photos and paintings he had actually seen, but he very
likely wasn't staring at an actual photo when he wrote the words. Even if he
was, who's to say he might not have taken auctorial liberties with what he
saw?

I know that after many re-readings of SotT, my minds-eye image of the
"canonical" Apollo photograph is now the (non-existent) one Wolfe described.

-- David Lebling, aka vizcacha

2010/7/2 António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>

> David Stockhoff wrote (02-07-2010 17:24):
>
>  Yeah, except it's not rising over anyone's shoulder.
>>
>
> You draw a vertical line, it *is* over the shoulder. If you then picture
> the planet rising in an arc, clockwise, it doesn't sound far off. But here
> my understanding of english may be just deficient.
>
>
>  I suppose I should clarify that I think it's plain that "visor of gold"
>> doesn't mean that at all. It just needs to be dominated almost entirely
>> by a solar/moonscape reflection.
>>
>
> The reflection on the visor, in that picture, looks like it's something
> relfected on a gilded surface. The black part could be interpreted as
> shadow. In fact, if I didn't know better, I might also guess the visor's
> surface was golden.
>
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