Couldn’t help but think of Fritz Leiber when I noticed the article about astronaut Scott Kelly growing two inches taller after not quite a year in space.
Instantly conjured up Fritz’s 1968 novel A Spectre is Haunting Texas, whose protagonist was raised in “the Sack” in orbit around the moon. He is tall, thin (in fact, a “Thin”), and can only move when he gets to earth by means of an exoskeleton.
Man, Fritz knew his science (he was an editor for Science Digest out of Chicago for years, so it’s no big surprise).
And science is proving his science fiction right. Or his fiction did right by science.
Or, he snuck in a prophetic insight here or there. . . .
Dug out my Walker hardback of Spectre to look it over. In a 1980 inscription Fritz blurbed it as “This tale of a cloaked skeleton & other weirdoes. . .”
By the time we get to Mars we’re going to need stretch pants, that’s all I have to say about it.
