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Write about a person experiencing the 'overview effect' (a feeling astronauts report having when they first view Earth from outer space).

Posted in Science Fiction on Nov 29, 2020

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✍️ 48 stories

The Real Reason We Went

Submitted to Contest #39

Wednesday the 27th June 2027, that was the day I was inducted into BIED. I remember vividly sitting in a conference room surrounded by about 20 or so other recruits. There was crappy coffee and weird biscuits. Everyone awkwardly mingled, pretending to be cool and mysterious; but really everyone was absolutely buzzing to be joining a government agency. You could spot the actual astronauts a mile off, they have presence and… muscles, it was vaguely distracting. I was joining the on the ground tech team, an apprentice. I had to be honest with m...

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Twice born

Submitted to Contest #39

I feel so light, like a feather. As if I am floating above the land. No scratch that. It doesn't seem like there's any land anywhere about me. My eyes felt drowsy while at the same time there's this bright light coming from somewhere, I've no idea of. This light simply won't let me open my eyes. My body doesn't feel weak and battered like it did some time back, well that's strange. Then I felt it. A push like never ever felt before. It literally threw me off my balance as I felt the same vacuum again. But this time I couldn't feel the pain a...

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Yugen's Effect: Age 1

Submitted to Contest #39

Life fades from black to a dim, cool, light. Her eyes strain to fight the rays of color and blurred images as we all do when roused from a deep sleep. Our eyes adjust; seeing our immediate surroundings, while our brains slowly comprehend what is going on. She looks up at the slowly rotating objects that hang before her field of view, moving ever so slightly above her head. These objects look familiar, she has seen them before, but her newly awakened mind is working to put the pieces together from her previous viewing. A few blinks to mo...

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Home Is Where I Mattered

Submitted to Contest #39

I think we got time wrong.I think we got time wrong because in that moment I stood still yet felt the entirety of my existence, pour in and out of me, in and out. I think we got time wrong because this doesn’t seem to pass and because everything that supposedly did pass is back as I hold, rather cling, on to it.I know we’re moving in space but I can really feel the space moving in me. My mind is beginning to spiral and it feels as if I’m no longer here. They said it would feel amazing, they said it would be exhilarating and that my problems ...

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Homeworld Syndrome

Submitted to Contest #39

She had read about it in piles of complimentary back seat magazines before. It was never described as a bad thing though. At the end of the day, Trans-Universal was trying to sell tickets. It was no surprise that their on-board literature would try to spin Homeworld Syndrome as this beautiful transcendent experience well worth the hefty price of admission. Brady had not really expected anything from it, she had heard it was not nearly as revelatory for someone born in a fringe colony. But seeing it now, earth, the once great ancestral centre...

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Overview

Submitted to Contest #39

I had never heard of the overview effect before my freshman year. I was sitting in my fifth period Earth and Space science class, which was right before lunch when my teacher introduced us to the topic. I sat in the middle of the class and was only focusing on the delicious pastrami and cheese sandwich that was sitting in my lunch box two feet away from me when it was brought up, and for a moment I was really confused. My attention was directed away from my lunch  and back onto my teacher, and as the class discussed the topic I was in a...

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Goldfinch Calling

Submitted to Contest #39

I float, my oxygen running out, but my breath fogs against my helmet. The ship is hiding the view of whatever's on the other side, but I'm too weak to move. I could just end it, take off my helmet. One swift move and I'd crumble like a long dried-out petal, though I'm already as brittle, aren't I?Ten years.How many years I spent studying while cradling my newborn child, having to juggle being an only father, and getting my qualifications to work for NASA. I stayed as strong as I could, never letting her see me cry when I had to ask my parent...

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The Room with a View

Submitted to Contest #39

November 20, 1998 Launch of International Space Station (ISS)This Journal Belongs to Travis BinkleyGifted to him by his lovely wife... Stay safe. I love you. Can't wait to hear your stories when you've come back to me. - E.B.Entry One  November 21, 2000Words have easily captured the beauty of love, the suffering of longing and every other human condition in between; but this. This is something words can’t capture. There aren’t enough ways to properly form the words to express the marvel of this sight. Can you imagine the...

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HOME

Submitted to Contest #39

I lobbed my backpack over the heads of the other workers to claim the top bunk in the far corner, away from the door to the dubious washroom.  Embarkation centres were not known for luxury: like airport hotels, they were functional, if not Spartan, in concept and delivery. My room-mates were a fine-looking bunch and more intelligent than the usual grunts. They seemed blasé about it all as if they had already completed many off-world jobs building habitats for colonists, though this was the first of its kind, apart from the lunar ba...

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before

Submitted to Contest #39

    Blank. That is how you would have described the whole world in the beginning. There was nothing but darkness and a spirit splashing about in a vast bottomless ocean. The figure, a child with a round face and big eyes was young, only two thousand nine hundred and twenty days old. The child’s name was Nimij and he is the divine.     The story goes that in the empty space, Nimij floated about in the water. His small, pudgy hands splashing excitedly, causing ripples to appear in the water. The circles formi...

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Strawberry

Submitted to Contest #39

With an exasperated sigh, Aaron tossed another crumpled sheet from his sketch pad into the overflowing trash can by the door. The pile of bad cartoons Aaron had gathered was more impressive than anything else he had accomplished for the past week. The weekly due date for his newspaper feature was only a day away, and everything he had done thus far had made its way to the wicker basket serving as his waste bin. All the crumpled up paper formed an origami-like structure, or a constellation of half drawn, reject ideas. His eyes dart...

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G-D is my G P S

Submitted to Contest #39

GOD = G P S                                                G ------P------------SGrace - Protector - Savior ©By Pastor Mike SiverOctober 21, 2019While driving to Sundance Motor to get a car I just purchased serviced. It is about a 2-hour drive and having only been one time before and not the driver I had n...

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One Last Look

Submitted to Contest #39

It wasn't a bunch of different disparate parts like the alien ships in a science-fiction movie. Agent Durer could see why writers and artists would think that it would be. He could also see the International Space Station, with its inelegant fans of solar panels jutting out to either side like wings on a bird that just kept flapping without ever getting off of the ground.  That was the pinnacle of human technology and space exploration for now, and considering current events, always would be. But presuming it was the best another sentie...

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A Great and Precious Thing

Submitted to Contest #39

The world is filled with absolutes, though humans tried to deny it. So much of the human experience was already made up of relatives that they wanted everything to be flexible, malleable, open for negation. Truths could always be spun, perspectives changed, feelings reframed. But there are certain things that do not slide on a scale, aren’t open to interpretation and can’t be argued away. Time. Math. Life. Death. From up here, I see the entire globe. A small, blue marble. All alone in the dark. Half-dead. There’s no such thing. Life either i...

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Surveying Earth

Submitted to Contest #39

The image of Earth filled the floor-to-ceiling window. Alex stared into its swirling depths and couldn’t decide whether to think this is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen, or good riddance. No, that was too harsh. Home would always be home, after all. She turned to study her captors and saviors, all strapped into their chairs with safety belts. They were humanoid, but had eyes that were too wide-set, and heads that were too narrow. Their skin was a deep tint of blue. Alex wondered if it was from a lack of oxygen. She was...

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