No specific ones.
Settlers who arrive on Mars.
The forbidding Martian landscape.
The settlements grow and start to assert themselves.
The colonization of Mars continues afoot, making the planet more Earthian
little by little.
The progress of colonization, as the civilizing forces of humanity -
builders, women, actual towns - begin to make their presence known on
Mars. The rockets are likened to locusts, swarming towards Mars and covering
it.
This prose poem evokes the process of colonization and of the attempt
to turn the strange surroundings into something more familiar and inhabitable.
At the end of this vignette, it's noted that ninety thousand colonizers
have already settled, with many more coming to Mars.
The title of this story may or may not refer obliquely to Nathanael
West's 1939 novel, Day of the Locust, about people searching for
success in contemporary Hollywood. One may argue that the influence of
ambition and human frailty is as important a part of Martian settlement
as in the surreal world of Hollywood.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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