'When I was a little kid I thought that when the sun was setting and the dark covering creatures and objects, they were disappearing, they were not existing anymore. Everything was only coming back with the sunrise.'
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’I’m actually from Kuilsriver, but we moved to Paarl and I got heavy asthma - so we decided to move here. Since we’ve been here I don’t get any asthma - nature became my health-pill here. I’m relaxed. We are totally off the grid - we don’t have a landline, or cell reception and the police van doesn’t even catch his radio signal here. We are cut off from the world and like it that way - and the kids can’t bother us unnecessarily. We do go to town once a week and then they can reach us. If there is an emergency the police will come out and call us. I prefer this place, because here you can actually see the stars - you get the feeling that they are so near that you want to pick them like flowers, while in town you don’t see it as there are too many lights around you. Here you get the darkness and it is so near to nature. I look at the moon basically every night because I walk up and down between the kitchen and here. Actually when I look at the moon I can almost tell you how many days it will be until full moon or till dark moon. You pick up a lot of things about the nature - like when it will rain. You can tell by the baboons and how they are screaming, by the ants carrying their food. Nature is absolutely part of my life here and I wouldn’t exchange it for town - not at all. I mean, you can’t actually describe all of this, you got to be here to feel it - to be part of it… sort of. I just acknowledge myself as a very privileged person, to be here - just to see the sky and nature on the ground and everything all come together. You have to be here to see what is going on - to live with it. Then you start to believe how great nature is, how great God is. I mean he put everything there for us and it fits together like a puzzle. I got no worry about time because when you are in nature you lose time, because there are so many things you observe. Time is not a factor here. You must not worry about getting older because you will get older.’
TJOL HERBST #2, TOLHUIS, R354 BETWEEN MATJIESFONTEIN AND SUTHERLAND
’I’m actually from Kuilsriver, but we moved to Paarl and I got heavy asthma - so we decided to move here. Since we’ve been here I don’t get any asthma - nature became my health-pill here. I’m relaxed. We are totally off the grid - we don’t have a landline, or cell reception and the police van doesn’t even catch his radio signal here. We are cut off from the world and like it that way - and the kids can’t bother us unnecessarily. We do go to town once a week and then they can reach us. If there is an emergency the police will come out and call us. I prefer this place, because here you can actually see the stars - you get the feeling that they are so near that you want to pick them like flowers, while in town you don’t see it as there are too many lights around you. Here you get the darkness and it is so near to nature. I look at the moon basically every night because I walk up and down between the kitchen and here. Actually when I look at the moon I can almost tell you how many days it will be until full moon or till dark moon. You pick up a lot of things about the nature - like when it will rain. You can tell by the baboons and how they are screaming, by the ants carrying their food. Nature is absolutely part of my life here and I wouldn’t exchange it for town - not at all. I mean, you can’t actually describe all of this, you got to be here to feel it - to be part of it… sort of. I just acknowledge myself as a very privileged person, to be here - just to see the sky and nature on the ground and everything all come together. You have to be here to see what is going on - to live with it. Then you start to believe how great nature is, how great God is. I mean he put everything there for us and it fits together like a puzzle. I got no worry about time because when you are in nature you lose time, because there are so many things you observe. Time is not a factor here. You must not worry about getting older because you will get older.’
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EVA STELLARIS (FROM "SWART STER OOR DIE KAROO, JAN RABIE 1957). DR. LUNA PELLEGRI, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN
Vir die eerste maal kyk sy op, haar blik reguit en eerlik, maar haar stem treurig: “My opdrag was slegs en spesifiek die biologiese en hidroponiese werk wat ek hier in Saakni gedoen het. Asseblief, u beskik oor my lewe, maar nie oor my woorde nie."
For the first time, she looks up, her gaze straight and honest, her voice sad: “My assignment was only and specifically the biological and hydroponic work I did here in Saakni. Please, you have the power over my life, but not my words."
From ‘Swart ster oor die Karoo’ (Black star over the Karoo) by Jan Rabie, 1957.
Eva Stellaris was sent as a helper from the future. Part of her command involved only answering in a way that complements the knowledge that already exists and not help directly, “that man should, after all, help himself.”
TELESCOPES, TELESCOPE SHOP, BRAKPAN, GAUTENG
‘When I was a young girl, we didn’t have telescopes. We had small binoculars mostly because it was after the world war. Today there are so many telescopes - and they are amazing. From this little size from where you could see the moon and the Planets to that big one over there where you can see literally everything.’ - Jess van Elferen, Shopkeeper, Telescope Shop, Brakpan, Gauteng.
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TOM LEARMONT #2, SCI-FI WRITER, GHOST WRITER, ILLOVO, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG
‘My three books are all about time, in them time becomes plastic, malleable, time becomes a thing which people can use as a weapon, time becomes a thing like where you can play a leapfrog war, you leap ahead in time, you get there earlier than the guy you are trying to destroy, you wait and when he pops out of sub metric space into metric space you zap him! That is where time becomes a theatre of war. Also, I love time. Everyone knows this story, about the two young fish. They are swimming along one morning, and they say ‘o what a lovely morning’. And they meet the old fish, he comes past and he says ‘hey, hallo boys’, he says ‘the water is nice this morning hey’. The young fish says, ‘what’s he mean by water?’. That’s like weird, like us saying - what do you mean by time? Is time granular, I don’t know. I think they worked out something like there is a Planck length for time, I’m not sure, don’t quote me on that. One of my characters says ‘time and space are granular they inhabit each others intestines, give them a shake and they come apart’. But this is all bullshit, all science-fiction. A real physicist would laugh, mind you I do have a physicist friend who read my books. He said ‘ja I enjoyed it’, he said ‘Jesus Tom you know, you come up with all this absolute nonsense and made up bullshit and it is so plausible!’. Which is a big compliment.’
WANDA DIAZ-MERCED
GAIASPHERE (CHAPTER ONE)
KNERSVLAKTE (GNASHING PLAIN) # 3, NORTHERN CAPE
IAN GLASS AND CHRIS FORDER, CEDERBERG ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY
'If you consider there are between 10 and 20 times as many galaxies outside ours as there are stars in our galaxy - and we have maybe 200 billion stars, so multiply that between 10 and 20 and that is the number of galaxies, and each of those may have 200 billion starts. So we are pretty insignificant. If you go and look at a piece of sand outside. That is how insignificant we are. We think we are important but we are not.' - Chris Forder. Amateur Telescope builder.
Read MoreNEELSIE AND JAKHALS # 3 (FROM LOELOERAAI BY LANGENHOVEN, 1923) KLAASTROOM, WESTERN CAPE
'To whom shall I dedicate this book? It is about a being who is not human, who is higher than man - an unattainable superior.
I think I will go to the opposite - and then I will not have to look very far. I lost a friend a long time ago - a friend that I loved and who loved me. I will never see him again forever; but forever I will never forget him. Now, after all these years, there is not a day that passes without his image coming before me and I'm grieving about him. To him I was the higher being - a Loeloeraai of a higher existence. To me he was the ultimate perfection I found on earth, of love and faithfulness and virtue. And I lost him, and I miss him dearly. . .
I dedicate this work:
To the memory of
MY FRIEND AND DOG, JAKHALS’
From the dedication of Loeloeraai, CJ Langenhoven, 4th Edition 1929, First published 1923. Translated from original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler.
Photograph inspired by Loeloeraai, CJ Langenhoven. Loeloeraai is a visitor from Venus, who spends about two weeks with a family in Oudtshoorn. They end up going on a small trip to the moon before Loeloeraai returns to Venus.
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SENDING KOSMOS, ID LAMPRECHT, 1980
SENDING KOSMOS, ID LAMPRECHT, 1980
In this book the main characters undergo an extreme acceleration in a new type of human built space ship. The speed and the effect that it has on them is referred to 'the judgement'. As they slowly start 'remembering' the future they realize that their destination sun and planet is named after themselves.
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LEOLOERAAI, 17th EDITION, DEDICATION TO JAKHALS
'To whom shall I dedicate this book? It is about a being who is not human, who is higher than man - an unattainable superior.
I think I will go to the opposite - and then I will not have to look very far. I lost a friend a long time ago - a friend that I loved and who loved me. I will never see him again forever; but forever I will never forget him. Now, after all these years, there is not a day that passes without his image coming before me and I'm grieving about him. To him I was the higher being - a Loeloeraai of a higher existence. To me he was the ultimate perfection I found on earth, of love and faithfulness and virtue. And I lost him, and I miss him dearly. . .
I dedicate this work:
To the memory of
MY FRIEND AND DOG, JAKHALS’
Translated from original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler, Loeloeraai, CJ Langenhoven, 4th Edition 1929, First published 1923.
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FRITS DEELMAN EN DIE SKEPE VAN MARS, LEON ROUSSEAU, 1957
JAN RABIE
Jan Rabie was born in George and went to the High School of Riversdale. At the University of Stellenbosch he has degrees B.A., S.O.D. and M.A. achieved. From 1948 to 1954 he lived in Paris. After a visit to the United States of America In 1966, using a Carnegie travel fair, he lived on the island of Crete from 1967 to 1969. He was a teacher and announcer at S.A.U.K., but is already a full-time full-time writer. He lives on Onrus River today. He is married to the painter Marjorie Wallace. Jan Rabie has gained popularity with his short prosecutions, of which 21 are the best known. His Bolandia series, in which four novels appeared so far, attracted a lot of attention, while he contributed to the Afrikaans youth literature with Twee Strandlopers and The Seeboek van de Sonderkossers. In addition, he wrote three books that can be described as science fiction, including Black Star across the Karoo. He has translated a large number of books, mainly from French and modern Greek
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SWART STER OOR DIE KAROO, 2ND EDITION, 1980, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1957. JAN RABIE
DIE EVOLUSIE VAN NATIONALISME, 1959, JAN RABIE.
This is not a sci-fi book, but it was written around the same time of the Swart Ster Oor Die Karoo, and contains a reference to the human relationship with the universe and the coming space age - it places humans in context of space to recommend a position away from nationalism.
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