The Top 10 WORST Things That Could Happen To Planet Earth
04. Sep, 2008 
5 Comments
In perusing the covers of science fiction pulp magazines (as I am known to do – it is a great and inspiring time-waster), I often notice themes or trends in both the artistic renderings and the subject matter.? Some subjects persist for decades.
One?subject that has persisted for a century is that of a view of Earth from space.?
To give you some idea of how much that image has changed over the course of 100 years, here?are the covers of The Electrical Experimenter, 1915 and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2002, presented side-by-side.
It wasn’t until we actually put cameras into space that we realized that clouds work both ways…
To make a finer point of it – here is one of the few pulp covers that depicted Earth in anything other than a North American – centric presentation -
And here is reality, what the Earth really looks like from the surface of the moon, courtesy of NASA and Apollo 8:
and a close-up, as presented by Apollo 17 and NASA:
?As our understanding of the cosmos and our ventures into space progressed, so did the depictions of the planet on the covers of the magazines – but it wasn’t until images of the real thing started coming back that the artists got it right.? Which gives you some small idea of how reality and SF intersect.
Despite having gotten it wrong most of the time, there was one thing the artists did get right. Bad things can happen to planet Earth in an eye blink.? So here are ten of the worst things that could happen:
#10: A spaceship could miss the stop sign:
#9: That giant Near Earth Asteroid we’ve missed because of lack of funding could be REALLY big -
#8: Mars could get really pissed off about at all of the itchy landers we’ve been sending there and decide to zap us with electricity -
#7: Aliens could invade for real.?Aliens that don’t care one gribblefarb for our stereotypes and just want all of our water -
#6: Giant aliens could invade and use Earth as an exercise ball -
#5: The sun could flare and cook everything -
#4: That nuclear Armageddon thing could still happen -
#3: It could spontaneously combust -
#2: Earth could just get sick and tired of us screwing everything up and try to spin us off -
#1: But the number one Worst Thing That Could Happen To Planet Earth is – we just keep on doing what we’re doing.
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I’ve not looked at that Apollo 17 photo for years, and I’m suprised by how far South the viewpoint appears to be. It’s partly my bad geography (I always want to put the equator through the Sahara).
I note also that you didn’t use the word apocalypse in this post.
No. And I didn’t use apocolypse either…
You know, everyone has those couple of words that they know how to spell correctly on an intellectual level, but something deep in their hindbrain insists is correctly spelled incorrectly. Yes, that’s what spell checkers are for, but the SC in wordpress bites and sometimes the hindbrain gets away with it.
Sorry, you posted on Earth destroying covers and I couldn’t resist.
As you might imagine, I learnt the spelling after getting it consistently wrong several times, so I had better stop before any of my mispellings make an appearance.
don’t sweat it. I obviously don’t…
the alien in the midle on #6 was ugly! it was horrible
i couldnt looooook aty it even!