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Practices of Looking
Practices of Looking
An Introduction to Visual Culture
Third Edition

Marita Sturken
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Lisa Cartwright
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

New York     Oxford

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
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© 2018, 2009, 2001 by Oxford University Press

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means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sturken, Marita, 1957- author. | Cartwright, Lisa, 1959- author.

Title: Practices of looking : an introduction to visual culture / Marita
Sturken, New York University; Lisa Cartwright, University of California at San Diego.
Description: Third edition. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016052818 | ISBN 9780190265717
Subjects: LCSH: Art and society. | Culture. | Visual perception. | Visual
communication. | Popular culture. | Communication and culture.
Classification: LCC N72.S6 S78 2017 | DDC 701/.03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052818

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by LSC Communications, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
 contents

acknowledgments ix
introduction 1
chapter 1 Images, Power, and Politics 13
Representation 18
Vision and Visuality 22
The Myth of Photographic Truth 24
Myth, Connotation, and the Meaning of Images 29
Semiotics and Signs 32
Images and Ideology 37
Image Icons 41

chapter 2 Viewers Make Meaning 51

Producers’ Intended Meanings 55
Aesthetics and Taste 60
Value, Collecting, and Institutional Critique 66
Reading Images as Ideological Subjects 74
Viewing Strategies 78
Appropriation and Reappropriation 81

chapter 3 Modernity: Spectatorship,

the Gaze, and Power 89
Modernity 89
Modernism 97
The Concept of the Modern Subject 100
Spectatorship and the Gaze 103

Iv
 Power and the Surveillance Gaze 109
The Other 113
Gender and the Gaze 120
Gaming and the Gaze 132

chapter 4 Realism and Perspective:

From Renaissance Painting
to Digital Media 139
Types of Realism 142
Perspective 148
Perspective and the Body 153
The Camera Obscura 156
Challenges to Perspective 158
Perspective in Digital Media 166

chapter 5 Visual Technologies,

Reproduction, and the Copy 179
Visualization and Technology 179
Visual Technologies 185
The Reproduced Image and the Copy 189
Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction 191
The Politics of Reproducibility 195
Ownership and Copyright 198
Reproduction and the Digital Image 205
3D Reproduction and Simulation 212

chapter 6 Media in Everyday Life 219

The Media, Singular and Plural 219
Everyday Life 222
Mass Culture and Mass Media 223
Critiques of Mass Culture 227
Media Infrastructures 234
Media as Nation and Public Sphere 240
Democracy and Citizen Journalism 243
Global Media Events 247

vi I CONTENTS
 chapter 7 Brand Culture: The Images
and Spaces of Consumption 257
Brands as Image, Symbol, and Icon 260
The Spaces of Modern Consumerism 265
Brand Ideologies 272
Commodity Fetishism and the Rise of the
Knowing Consumer 278
Social Awareness and the Selling of Humanitarianism 283
Social Media, Consumer Data, and the Changing
Spaces of Consumption 288
DIY Culture, the Share Economy,
and New Entrepreneurism 293

chapter 8 Postmodernism: Irony,

Parody, and Pastiche 301
Postmodernity/Postmodernism 302
Simulation and the Politics of Postmodernity 307
Reflexivity and Distanced Knowing 311
Jaded Knowing and Irony 316
Remix and Parody 322
Pastiche 325
Postmodern Space, Architecture, and Design 330

chapter 9 Scientific Looking, Looking

at Science 337
Opening Up the Body to the Empirical Medical Gaze 340
Medicine as Spectacle: The Anatomical and Surgical Theater 343
Evidence, Classification, and Identification 349
Bodily Interiors and Biomedical Personhood 357
The Genetic and Digital Body 364
Visualizing Pharmaceuticals and Science Activism 370

chapter 10 The Global Flow of Visual Culture 379

The History of Global Image Reproduction 381
Concepts of Globalization 386

CONTENTS
I vii
 The World Image 391
Global Television 397
The Global Flow of Film 399
Social Movements, Indigenous Media, and Visual Activism 402
The Global Museum and Contests of Culture 406
Refugees and Borders 415

glossary 425
credits 459
index 475

viii I CONTENTS
 acknowledgments

O ur heartfelt thanks to the many artists and designers whose work

appears in this edition. The book is a tribute to you. We are grate-
ful as well to the many colleagues whose scholarly and critical input has deeply
informed this third edition of Practices of Looking. Major thanks to those who
offered frank advice and suggestions, and especially to the anonymous readers for
the press, listed below, who took the time to help us to improve this book based
on their experiences teaching with the previous edition. Thanks as well to our own
students, who have provided crucial feedback and steered us toward so many urgent
and compelling examples, issues, and theories along the way: this book is a tribute
to you as well.
We thank Lori Boatright for her continual support and for her sound counsel on
intellectual property rights. Dana Polan provided steady support to an extraordinary
degree; his intellectual guidance is vastly appreciated. We thank Rosalie Romero,
Nilo Goldfarb Cartwright, Inês Da Silva Beleza Barreiros, Daphne Magaro White,
Jake Stutz, Stephen Mandiberg, Kelli Moore, and Pawan Singh, all of whom con-
tributed in different ways and at different times to the ideas, choices, and writing
style adopted in this edition. Elizabeth Wolfson and Kavita Kulkarni provided very
important image research in early stages of this edition. We are very grateful to
Cathy Hannabach/Ideas on Fire for expertly editing our prose and helping to shape
the book’s argument.
At Oxford University Press, we have benefited immensely from the steadfast
support of Toni Magyar, Patrick Lynch, Mark Haynes, and other members of the
Oxford staff who worked with us during this process. We are especially grateful
to Paul Longo, who guided the book and all its details so well, and to Sandy Cook,
permissions manager extraordinaire, for her extensive and expert detective work in
image research. We learned so much from Sandy. Thanks to Allegra Howard for
picking up the book’s oversight late in the process, and to Cailen Swain for image
research early on. Thanks as well to Richard Johnson, Micheline Frederick, and the
copyediting and production team. Michele Laseau did excellent work on the layout
and cover design for this third edition. We are grateful to them and to Estudio Teddy
Cruz + Forman for granting us permission to use the dynamic graphics that grace
this edition’s cover.

I ix
 Jawad Ali Art Institute of California, Hollywood
Brian Carroll Berry College
Ross F. Collins North Dakota State University
Jacob Groshek Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Danny Hoffman University of Washington
Whitney Huber Columbia College, Chicago
Russell L. Kahn SUNY Institute of Technology
William H. Lawson University of Maryland, College Park
Kent N. Lowry Texas Tech University
Julianne Newmark New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Sheryl E. Reiss University of Southern California
Beth Rhodes Art Institute of California, Los Angeles
Shane Tilton Ohio University, Lancaster
Emily E. West University of Massachusetts Amherst
Richard Yates University of Minnesota

x I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 Introduction

h ow do you look? This question is loaded with possible meanings. How you
look is, in one sense, how you appear. This is in part about how you con-
struct yourself for others to see, through practices of the self that involve grooming,
fashion, and social media. The selfie is a powerful symbol of this era in which not only
images but also imaging practices are used as primary modes of expression and com-
munication in everyday life. These days, you may be as likely to make images as you
are to view them. How you look to others, and whether and where you appear, has to
do with your access to such things as cameras, personal electronic devices and tech-
nologies, and social media. It is also contingent upon your place within larger struc-
tures of authority and in conventions of belief. Technical literacy as well as nationality,
class, religion, age, gender, and sexual identity may impact your right to appear, as
well as your ability to make and use images and imaging technologies. Nobody is
free to look as they please, not in any context. We all perform within (and against)
the conventions of cultural frameworks that include nation, religion, politics, family,
school, work, and health. These frameworks inform our taste and self-­fashioning, and
they give rise to the conventions that shape how we look and where and how we
appear. How you look, even when deeply personal, is also always political.
We can see the politics of looking, erasure, and the conventions of looking in
this image. The Bahraini protesters pictured in Figure I.1 hold symbolic coffins with
photographs of victims of the government’s crackdown on the opposition. Some of
the photographs appear to be selfies, others family photographs, and still others of-
ficial portraits, perhaps workplace photographs. The faces of women are left blank
out of respect for religious and cultural prohibitions against representing women
in images. We might say that they are erased, but we may also note that they do
appear in the form of a generic graphic that signifies them through the presence of
the hijab.
How you look can also refer to the practices in which you engage to view, un-
derstand, appreciate, and make meaning of the world. To look, in this sense, is to
use your visual apparatus, which includes your eyes and hands, and also technolo-
gies like your glasses, your camera, your computer, and your phone, to engage the
world through sight and image. To look in this sense might be to glance, to peer,
to stare, to look up, or to look away. You may give little thought to what you see,

I1
 FIG. I.1
or you may analyze it deeply. What you see is likely to appear
Bahraini protesters carry symbolic
coffins with pictures of victims differently to others. Whereas some may see the hijab graphic
of the government crackdown on in the Bahraini protest photograph as a sign of women’s erasure,
opposition protests in the Shiite
others may see it as honoring women’s presence as activists in
village of Barbar, May 4, 2012
this political context.
Practices of Looking is devoted to a critical understanding
and interpretation of the codes, meanings, rights, and limits that make images and
looking practices matter in our encounters in the world. Visual theorist Nicholas
Mirzoeff tells us that the right to look is not simply about seeing. He emphasizes
that looking is an exchange that can establish solidarity or social dominance and
which extends from the connection between self and other. Looking can be re-
stricted and controlled—it can be used to manipulate ideas and beliefs, but it can
also be used to affirm one’s own subjectivity in the face of a political system that
controls and regulates looking. In all of these senses, looking is implicated in the
dynamics of power, though never in straightforward or simple ways. This book
aims to provide an understanding of the specificity of looking practices as social
practices and the place of images in systems of social power. We hope that readers
will use this book to approach making images and studying the ways in which the
visual is negotiated in art practice, in communication and information systems, in
journalism, in activism, and in making, doing, and living in nature and the built

2 I INTRODUC TION
environment. Practices of Looking supports the development of critical skills that
may inform your negotiation of life in a world where looking, images, and imaging
practices make a difference. Whether you are a maker of visual things and visual
tools, an interpreter and analyst of the visual world, or just someone who is curious
about the roles that looking plays in a world rife with screens, devices, images, and
displays, you engage with the visual. This book is designed to invite you to think
in critical ways about how that engagement unfolds in a world that is increasingly
made, or constituted, through visual mediation. Looking is regarded, throughout
this book, as a set of practices informed by a range of social arenas beyond art and
media per se. We engage in practices of looking, as consumers and producers, in
domains that range from the highly personal to the professional and the public,
from advertising, news media, television, movies, and video games to social media
and blogs. We negotiate the world through a multitude of ways of seeing, but
rarely do we stop and ask how we look.
We live in a world in which images proliferate in daily life. Consider pho-
tography. Whereas in the 1970s the home camera was taken out for something
­special—those precious “Kodak moments” since the introduction of phone cam-
eras in 2000, taking photographs has become, for many, a daily habit. Indeed, many
hundreds of billions of photographs are taken each year. Each minute, tens of thou-
sands are uploaded to Instagram, and over 200,000 are posted to Facebook. In one
hour, more images are shared than were produced in all of the nineteenth century.
Photographs may be personal, but they are also always potentially public.
Through art, news, and social media, photographs can be a crucial force in the
visual negotiation of politics, the struggle for social justice, and the creation of
celebrity. Increasingly, people are resisting oppression through the use of photo-
graphs and videos marshaled as a form of witnessing, commentary, and protest, as
we can see in the use of photographs on protest placards.
Consider paintings and drawings. How is it different to see an original work
in a museum from viewing it at home, in a print copy that hangs on your wall, or
online, in a digital reproduction on your computer screen? How does it feel to be in
the presence of an original work you have long appreciated through reproductions
but never before seen in its original form? What does it mean to have your culture’s
original works destroyed or looted in warfare or as a political act of iconoclasm?
Meaning, whether in relationship to culture, politics, data, information, identity,
or emotion, is generated overwhelmingly through the circulation and exchange of
visual images and icons. The idea of the original still holds sway in an era of ram-
pant reproduction. Meaning is also generated through visuality, which we perform
in the socially and historically shaped field of exchange in which we negotiate the
world through our senses.
That we live in a world in which seeing and visuality predominate is not a nat-
ural or random fact. Visuality defines not only the social conditions of the visible
but also the workings of power in modern societies. Think about some of the ways

INTRODUC TION
I3
 FIG. I.2
Ken Gonzales-Day, ­Nightfall I,
from Searching for California Hang
Trees, 2007–12 (LightJet print on
­aluminum, 36 × 46")

in which seeing operates in

everyday dynamics of power.
Take the classroom, a space in
which many people look at one
person, the instructor, who is
assumed to have knowledge
and power. Consider govern-
ment buildings and the ways
in which their design features
lead you to notice some fea-
tures and restrict your access to others, maintaining national defense and gov-
ernment secrets while promoting a sense of their iconic stature. As a pervasive
condition of being, visuality engages us, and we engage it, through practices of
looking. These practices are learned and habitual, pervasive and fundamental. We
engage in them in ways that go well beyond our encounters with images.
We must understand not only what we see, but also what we cannot see,
what is made absent from sight. Take this work, Nightfall I, by the artist Ken
­Gonzales-Day. It is a large-scale print depicting the simple lines of a leafless tree
framed against a jet black sky. The work is from the series Searching for California
Hang Trees, in which Gonzales-Day documents trees throughout the state of Cali-
fornia on which individuals, many of them Mexican, were hung by lynch mobs.
Gonzales-Day invokes absence on a series of levels: the body that was hung from
this tree is no longer evident. Its absence gestures to the larger absence in history
books of the fact that over 350 lynchings of young Mexican men took place in Califor-
nia, a history Gonzales-Day chronicles in his book Lynching in the West: 1850–1935
(Duke 2006). The artist uses the “empty” icon of the extant lynching tree to repre-
sent the very conditions of making a fact invisible. Whereas in the first image we
showed (the Bahraini protest march) those people erased in political killings are
made present through images, in this series the empty trees stand in for the people
killed. Visuality is about the conditions of negotiation through which something
becomes visible and under which it can be erased. How invisibility is “seen” and
made meaningful is an important question for visual studies.
Consider as well the visual dynamics of built environments—the ways in which
design, whether by choice or through making do with what is at hand, impacts the
meaning and use of a place. Consider the cultural conventions through which look-
ing creates connections and establishes power dynamics among people in a given

4 I INTRODUC TION
place, such as a windowless government building surrounded by walls and pro-
tected by guards and surveillance cameras. We might ask who has the right to see
and who does not, and who is given the opportunity to exercise that right—when,
and under what conditions.
Of course, having the physical capacity to see is not a given. But whether
you are sighted, blind, or visually impaired, your social world is likely to be orga-
nized around an abundance of visual media and looking practices. Its navigation
may require adaptive optical devices, such as glasses, or navigational methods that
substitute for sight, such as echolocation. The practices we use to navigate and
communicate in this heavily visually constituted world are increasingly important
components of the ways in which we know, feel, and live as political and cultural
beings. We might say that our world is constituted, or made, through forms of visu-
ality, even as it is co-constituted through sound, touch, and smell along with sight.
Visual media are rarely only visual; they are usually engaged through sound, em-
bedded with text, and integrated with the physical experience of objects we touch.
Practices of Looking draws together a range of theories about vision and visu-
ality formulated by scholars in visual culture studies, art history, film and media
studies, communication, design, and a range of other fields. These theories help
us to rethink the history of the visual and better understand its role after the digital
turn. These writers, most of them working in or on the cusp of the era of digital
media and the Internet, have produced theories devoted to interpreting and ana-
lyzing visual culture.

Defining Culture
The study of visual culture derives many of its primary theoretical approaches from
cultural studies, an interdisciplinary field that first emerged in the mid-1960s in
Great Britain. One of the aims of cultural studies, at its foundation, was to provide
viewers, citizens, and consumers with the tools to gain a better understanding of
how we are produced as social subjects through the cultural practices that make up
our lives, including those involving everyday visual media such as television and
film. A shared premise of cultural studies’ focus on everyday culture was that the
media do not simply reflect opinion, taste, reality, and so on; rather, the media are
among the forms through which we are “made” as human subjects—as citizens,
as sexual beings, as political beings, and so on.
Culture was famously characterized by the British scholar Raymond Williams
as one of the most complex words in the English language. It is an elaborate con-
cept, the meanings and uses of which have changed over time among the many
critical theorists who have used it.1 Culture, Williams proposed in 1958, is funda-
mentally ordinary.2 To understand why this statement was so important, we must
recall that prior to the 1960s, the term culture was used to describe the “fine” arts

INTRODUC TION
I5
 and learned cultures. A “cultured” person engaged in the contemplation of clas-
sic works of art, literature, music, and philosophy. In keeping with this view, the
nineteenth-century British poet and social critic Matthew Arnold defined culture as
the “best which has been thought and said” in the world.3 Culture, in Arnold’s un-
derstanding, includes writing, art, and other forms of expression in instances that
conform to particular ideals of perfection. If one uses the term this way, a work by
Michelangelo or a composition by Mozart would represent the epitome of culture,
not because these are works of monetary value but because they would be believed
to embody a timeless ideal of aesthetic perfection that transcends class.
The apparent “perfection” of culture, according to the late twentieth-century
French sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, is in fact the product of training in
what counts as (quality) culture. Taste for particular forms of culture is cultivated
in people through exposure to and education about aesthetics.4 Bourdieu’s em-
phasis on culture as something acquired through training (enculturation) involved
making distinctions not only between works (masterworks and amateur paintings,
for example) but also between high and low forms (painting and television, for ex-
ample). As we explore in Chapter 2, “high versus low” was the traditional way of
framing discussions about aesthetic cultures through the first half of the twentieth
century, with high culture widely regarded as quality culture and low culture as its
debased counterpart. This division has become obsolete with the complex circula-
tions of contemporary cultural flow.
Williams drew on anthropology to propose that we embrace a broader definition
of culture as a “whole way of life of a social group or whole society,” meaning a broad
range of activities geared toward classifying and communicating symbolically within
a society. Popular music, print media, art, and literature are some of the classificatory
systems and symbolic means of expression through which humans organize their
lives. People make, view, and reuse these media in different ways and in different
places. The same can be said of sports, cooking, driving, relationships, and kinship.
Williams’s broader, more anthropological definition of culture leads us to notice ev-
eryday and pervasive activities, helping us to better understand mass and popular
forms of classification, expression, and communication as legitimate and meaningful
aspects of culture and not simply as debased or crude forms of expression.
Following from Williams, cultural studies scholars proposed that culture is not
so much a set of things (television shows or paintings, for example) as a set of pro-
cesses or practices through which individuals and groups produce, consume, and
make sense of things, including their own identities. Culture is produced through
complex networks of making, watching, talking, gesturing, looking, and acting—
networks through which meanings are negotiated among members of a society or
group. Objects such as images and media texts come into play in this network of
exchange as active agents. They draw us to look and to feel or speak in particular
ways. The British cultural theorist Stuart Hall stated: “It is the participants in a cul-
ture who give meaning to people, objects, and events. . . . It is by our use of things,

6 I INTRODUC TION
and what we say, think and feel about them—how we represent them—that we
give them a meaning.”5 Following from Hall, we can say that just as we give mean-
ing to objects, so too do the objects we create, gaze on, and use for communication
or simply for pleasure give meaning to us. Things are active agents in the dynamic
interaction of social networks.
Our use of the term culture throughout this book emphasizes this under-
standing of culture as a fluid and interactive set of processes and practices. Culture
is complex and messy, and not a fixed set of ideals, tastes, practices, or aesthetics.
Meanings are produced not in the minds of individuals so much as through a pro-
cess of negotiation among practices within a particular culture. Visual culture is
made between individuals and the artifacts, images, technologies, and texts created
by themselves and others. Interpretations of the visual, which vie with one ­another,
shape a culture’s worldview. But visual culture, we emphasize, is grounded in
­multimodal and multisensory cultural practices, and not solely in images and visu-
ality. We study visual culture and visuality in order to grasp their place in broader,
multisensory networks of meaning and experience.

The Study of Visual Culture

Visual culture emerged as a field of study in the 1980s, just as images and visual
screens were becoming increasingly prevalent in the production of media and modes
of information, communication, entertainment, and aesthetics. The study of visual
culture takes as one of its basic premises the idea that images from different social
realms are interconnected, with art, advertising, science, news media, and enter-
tainment interrelated and cross-influential. Many scholars no longer find viable the
traditional divisions in academia through which images in different realms (such as
art history, film studies, and communication) have been studied apart from other
categories of the visual. The cross-fertilization of categories is the result of historical
shifts, technological developments, and changing viewer practices. Through digital
technology, media are now merged in unprecedented ways. We may view art, read
news media, receive medical records, shop, and watch television and movies on
computers. The different industries and types of practice inherent in each form are
no longer as discrete as they once were.
Our title Practices of Looking gestures to this expanded social field of the
visual, emphasizing that to understand the images and imaging technologies with
which we engage every day, we must analyze the ways in which practices of look-
ing inform our ways of being in the world. Practices of Looking, in its first edition in
1999, took as its distant inspiration John Berger’s 1972 classic Ways of Seeing. The
book was a model for the examination of images across such disciplinary boundar-
ies as media studies and art history and it was influential in disparate social realms
such as art and advertising. The terrain of images and their trajectories, and the
theories we use to interpret them, have become significantly more complex since

INTRODUC TION
I7
 Berger wrote his book and since our first edition was published. At that time, the in-
formation space known then as “World Wide Web” was a fairly recent innovation,
and it was difficult to transmit image files online. Digital reproduction was not very
advanced, and transmission speed and volume were prohibitive. Technological and
cultural changes in place by 2008, when the second edition of Practices of Looking
was produced, had introduced new modes of image production and circulation.
The mix of styles in postmodernism and the increased mixing of different kinds of
images across social domains prompted us to further enhance the interdisciplinary
approach at the center of this book. At the same time, the restructuring of the
media industry through the rise of digital media had blurred many of the boundar-
ies that had previously existed between forms of media. Media convergence had
changed the nature of the movies and transformed television and the experience
of the audience. In the first edition we proposed that an interdisciplinary approach
encompassing art, film, media, and the experience of looking was merited because
these domains did not exist in isolation from one another. By the second edition,
those social domains were even more interconnected, and digital technology had
created increased connections between academic fields of study.
By this third edition, in 2017, cultural meanings and image practices had un-
dergone significant further transformation. Most significant was the rise of social
media as a platform for visual culture. The Internet, screen culture, mobile phones,
and digital technology dominate modes of communication, political engagement,
and cultural production. Even classical and historical works are impacted as digital
technologies are increasingly incorporated in preservation and display strategies. This
edition has been updated to address changes in the contemporary visual culture land-
scape in a host of ways. Images and media now circulate more frequently and more
quickly than ever before. This is reflected in the proliferation of prosumer and remix
cultures, the ubiquitous presence of smartphones with cameras, the popularity of
the selfie, the use of social media images to advance social movements as well as to
promote brand culture, and the increased intermixing of categories such as science,
education, leisure, and consumerism. Consider this example of science “edutain-
ment”: a Lego model of an MRI machine. Created by Ian Moore, a technical support
consultant for Lego in the United Kingdom, the toy was designed to help hospital
personnel better explain the procedure to children at Royal Berkshire Hospital in
Reading. Design innovation, biomedical imaging, popular consumer culture, and
science education converge, and the story is circulated globally on social media, pro-
moting the Lego brand’s social contributions across all of these categories of culture.

Ways to Use This Book

Practices of Looking is organized into ten chapters divided into subsections that
can be used in a modular fashion. While the first two chapters are the most in-
troductory, there is no “right” order in which to read this book. Each chapter is

8 I INTRODUC TION
 FIG. I.3
designed so that it is comprehensible apart from the whole. Lego MRI suite model built by Ian
Each accommodates different emphases and trajectories Moore for the Royal Berkshire hos-
depending on the focus in a given area of interest or course pital in Reading, United Kingdom

focus. Practices of Looking was written to work in courses on

visual culture, design, communication, media studies, and art history. At the same
time, this is not a generalist book. We present multiple theories drawn from critical
theory, visual studies, media studies, and other fields of study to offer here a range
of concepts through which to arrive at new ways of engaging with the visual in
the social worlds in which we interact. Practices of Looking does not offer a uni-
fied methodology for making art or for empirically studying engagement with the
visual. Rather, the book offers a varied set of tools for critical thinking, interpreta-
tion, and analysis—tools intended to be tried in different combinations to inform
how you think about art, design, and visual culture, how meaning is made, and
how you make art, media, and things. The book concludes with an extensive glos-
sary of terms used throughout the book. Each chapter ends with a bibliography for
further reading.
Chapter 1, “Images, Power, and Politics,” introduces many of the key themes
of the book, defining concepts such as representation, ideology, image icons,
and photographic truth. It provides an overall introduction to the basic principles
of visual semiotics. In this third edition, we have incorporated some important
updates to the discussion of photographic meanings and strategies. We discuss
body cameras and their use as evidence in police work and law and, here and in
other chapters, we expand upon the use of photography in social media and the
rise of citizen journalism.
Chapter 2, “Viewers Make Meaning,” focuses on the ways that viewers pro-
duce meaning from images and explores the complex dynamics of appropriation,

INTRODUC TION
I9
 incorporation, taste, aesthetics, collecting, and display. Prior to the twenty-first cen-
tury, visual media was primarily something made in industry studios and watched
by consumers on television sets and movie screens. Today, we experience most
forms of media on the screens of computers and mobile devices, and the consumer
is also a producer of images. In this chapter, we look in depth at the role of the con-
sumer who is also a maker and transmitter of visual images.
Chapter 3,”Modernity: Spectatorship, the Gaze, and Power,” examines the
foundational aspects of modernity and theories of power and spectatorship. This
chapter explores the concepts of the modern subject and the gaze in both psycho-
analytic theory and theories of power and “the Other” with enhanced attention to
contemporary colonialism and postcolonial theory. We have incorporated in this
edition a discussion of modernity that emphasizes more pointedly the human sub-
ject’s gaze relative to negotiations of politics and power globally and across catego-
ries of race, gender, and sexuality. Our discussion of art practice addresses recent
works by queer and black women artists, and we have included popular media
examples such as the television show Homeland that help us to foreground public
and global contestation about visual meanings and messages concerning Islam,
connecting these texts to nineteenth-century colonial painting, twentieth-century
journalism, and contemporary neocolonial themes in advertising in order to demon-
strate the historical scope of European and American colonial imaginings of Islam.
Chapter 4, “Realism and Perspective: From Renaissance Painting to Digital
Media,” explores the history of realism in representation and maps out the his-
tory of technologies of seeing, emphasizing instruments and techniques used to
render perspective from the Renaissance to the present. In the third edition we
have updated our discussion of screen cultures and video games in particular, in-
troducing discussion about the conflicts over the politics of gender and sexuality
that have raged in the online gaming community.
Chapter 5, “Visual Technologies, Reproduction, and the Copy,” considers the
history of reproduction practices and the status of the copy, as well as intellectual
property law, emphasizing art copyright and brand trademark. This chapter traces
reproduction from mechanical reproduction to digital reproduction and 3D mod-
eling. In this edition we have expanded the discussion about computer screens
and perspective in relationship to the history of perspective in classical painting,
bringing it up to date with the vital expanding literature on computer game culture
and virtual worlds.
Chapter 6, “Media in Everyday Life,” examines the history of mass media,
considering concepts ranging from media and everyday life, mass culture, and the
public sphere to media infrastructures, citizen journalism, and global media live-
ness. Since 2000, there has been much written about media convergence, a con-
cept that refers to the way computers have become the primary platforms for media
forms. The film and television industries now overlap with each other and with the
computer industry. Boundaries between independent and corporate media cultures

10 I INTRODUC TION
have become less distinct as access to platforms becomes more ubiquitous and
social worlds are more readily visible online. In this edition we look at the strategies
used to introduce marginal voices across media industries and practices that are
increasingly digital and global in their orientation and scope. We also introduce a
discussion of social media as a source of news.
Chapter 7, “Brand Culture: The Images and Spaces of Consumption,” focuses
on the integration of brand culture in the shifting terrain of social media marketing
and consumption. We explore the spaces of consumerism, from nineteenth-century
arcades to online shopping, and note changes in marketing and consumer practices
ranging from the advent of print advertising to the rise of social media brand cul-
ture and the integration of social cause awareness campaigns into marketing strat-
egies. In this edition we enhance our discussion of humanitarian cause marketing
alongside new discussions of such important phenomena as brand culture and the
share economy. When the first edition of this book was written, consumption and
advertising were targets of critique by cultural studies theorists. Since then, mar-
keting and retail have become sites of alternative practice as people with commit-
ments to environmental sustainability, worker rights, local commerce, and green
business strategies have entered the fields of manufacture, retail, and marketing.
We have included discussion of this important new direction in consumer and
brand cultures.
Chapter 8, “Postmodernism: Irony, Parody, and Pastiche,” looks at the central
concepts of postmodern theory, the dominance of irony in popular culture, remix
culture, postmodern architecture and strategies of simulation, reflexivity, pastiche,
and parody. In this edition we have expanded our discussion of postmodern design
and architecture as well as our account of simulation, a concept with enhanced
significance in a digital world in which representations (copies of the real) have
become less vital than the speculative models and prototypes on which the real is
imagined and brought into existence.
In Chapter 9, “Scientific Looking, Looking at Science,” we consider how the
visual and visuality have been deployed in science, and in medicine and forensics
in particular. We have expanded our discussion of early representations of the body
in medicine to ground updated accounts of biomedical imaging and biometrics in
cultures of surveillance.
Chapter 10, “The Global Flow of Visual Culture,” examines the global circu-
lation of all forms of media, concepts of globalization, diasporic and indigenous
media, and the globalization of the art world and the museum. As we approach
what might be called late postmodernity, this chapter considers theoretical engage-
ments in a postcritical turn that aims to address the economic downturn of 2008;
the rise of new global and regional social movements such as the Arab Spring,
Occupy, and Black Lives Matter; and the broadening recognition of anthropogenic
environmental changes that have altered the face of the planet, global finance, and
the world context for art, architecture, television, film, and media cultures.

INTRODUC TION
I 11
 We encourage you to use this book interactively with other texts and other
media in your everyday lives. Go out in the world to museums, political events,
and consumer environments and consider the ways that visuality comes into play.
Look at how looking practices are enacted around you. Make art and media in ways
that are informed by your appropriations of the methods and ideas in this book.
Take these ideas and try them out, even in your everyday life. When you go to
a clinic for health care, notice how and when looking and visual representation
come into play in your treatment. Notice how and when looking is sanctioned,
and when it becomes off limits to you. Watch/read the news with full attention to
how it is composed, framed, and edited. Watch others watching the news. Try to
discern not only what news is shown but also what is not shown. Observe who
took the pictures posted on news sites, and look at credits to see who owns the
rights to them. Studying visual culture is not only about seeing what is put on dis-
play. It is also about seeing how things are displayed and seeing what we are not
shown, what we do not see—either because we do not have sight ability, because
something is restricted from view, or because we do not have the means for under-
standing and coming to terms with what is right before our eyes. Consider what
is not visible. Use your camera to look at and document the looking practices in
which others engage. Use these theories to consider the dynamics of the gaze and
the politics of gender and identity, power and authority in the images you take and
use, from the selfie to the bystander video to your own artwork. Culture matters,
and images matter, in every aspect of our lives. We invite you to see how visual cul-
ture and visuality work in relation to your own negotiations of feelings and beliefs,
as well as those of others, as we make meanings together in the world today.

Notes
1. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1983), 87; see also Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (New York: Doubleday, 1958).
2. Raymond Williams, “Culture Is Ordinary,” in Resources of Hope (London: Verso, [1958] 1989), 3–18.
3. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (Oxford: Project
Gutenberg, 1869), viii, 7, 15–16, 41, 58, 67, 105, 108–110; see also http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/
epub/4212/pg4212-images.html.
4. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1984).
5. Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed.
Stuart Hall (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 1–11.

12 I INTRODUC TION
 chapter one

Images, Power,
and Politics

e very day, we engage in social practices of looking to experience the world.

Like other practices, looking involves relationships of power. To willfully
look at an image, or not to look, is sometimes a choice. More often, though, we
respond to the power of the image and its maker to get us to look, or to force us
to look away. To be made to look, to be refused the right to look, and to engage in
an exchange of looks all entail engagements with power. A person who is blind or
has low vision contends with visual experience and communication no less than
a sighted person. Looking can be sanctioned or off limits, easy or difficult, plea-
surable or unpleasant, harmless or risky. Conscious and unconscious aspects of
looking intersect. We don’t always know why we look, or how we feel about what
we see. We engage in practices of looking to communicate, influence, maneuver
through the world, and make sense of our lives. Even when we opt not to look—
when we look away, or when we rely on our other senses to feel and know—our
activities are invested with visual meanings. In so many ways, our world is orga-
nized around practices of looking.
We live in cultures that are increasingly permeated by visual images and tech-
nologies. In these contexts, we invest the visual artifacts and images we create and
encounter on a daily basis with significant power. For instance, personal photo-
graphs may be invested with the power to conjure feelings about an absent person;
political images may be invested with the power to incite belief and action. A single
image can serve many purposes, appear in an array of contexts, and mean different
things to different people. Images increasingly circulate digitally with great speed
across cultural and geographical distances. The power of images is derived both
from the shared meanings they generate across locations and the particular mean-
ings they hold in a given place or culture.

I 13
 This image of women and children looking dramatically draws our attention to
practices of looking. The photograph, which does not show us what the women
and children see, was taken in the early 1940s by Weegee, a self-taught photogra-
pher known for his documentation of urban street crime and everyday spectacle.
Weegee, whose real name was Ascher (Arthur) Fellig, tracked crimes reported to
the police, sometimes arriving on the scene before the authorities—hence his pen
name, a play on the occult board game “Ouija.” In the twenty-first century, we
are accustomed to seeing events broadcast live over news sites, Twitter, and other
social media. In the 1940s, fast-paced reporting was harder to achieve. In the next
photograph, we see Weegee composing a news story out of his car trunk, where
he has installed a mobile office with a typewriter and camera equipment. People on
the street could enjoy the spectacle of Weegee, the proto social-media journalist,
cutting corners on production time to generate news stories and photographs as
quickly as possible in the predigital era of print media and photography.
“A woman relative cried . . . but neighborhood dead-end kids enjoyed the show
when a small-time racketeer was shot and killed,” states the caption for the photo-
graph The First Murder in the 1945 book Naked New York.1 On the facing page of
that book is displayed a photograph presumably depicting what the children saw:
the bullet-riddled body of a man in a suit sprawled face down
FIG. 1.1
on a bloodstained sidewalk. It is the photograph of the women
Weegee (Arthur Fellig), The First
Murder, 1941 (gelatin silver print) and children looking, however, and not the gruesome image of
the dead racketeer, that has become one of the most iconic of

14 I Images, Power, and Politics

Weegee’s photographs. The First Murder calls
attention to both the charged expressions of
people caught in the act of looking at a crime
scene and the capacity of the still camera
to capture such ephemeral expressions of
­emotion—feelings that are deeply reactive and
private, and are not performed for the camera
or the public eye. The children are caught in
an unguarded moment of reaction to what was
presumably their first encounter with a murder
scene. Their expressions of morbid fascina-
tion, in which we see thrill mixed with horror,
are matched by our own fascinated looks as we
scrutinize their raw expressions immortalized
in the photograph.
Images of violence and brutality have been
used throughout the history of ­photography—
FIG. 1.2
sometimes as forms of violence themselves, and
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) typing in
sometimes to expose and protest injustice. An the trunk of his 1938 Chevy, 1942,
important example of this is the ­photographic by unidentified photographer

archive that surrounds the murder of Emmett

Till and the ensuing trial. In 1955, Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, was
kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by two white men in a rural Mississippi town
where Till was visiting relatives. Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam abducted Till from his
uncle’s home, beat him, and forced him to carry a seventy-five-pound cotton-gin fan
to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where they bound the fan to the boy’s neck
with barbed wire before throwing his maimed body into the river. The murderers
alleged that Till, who was black, had flirted with a white woman—­Bryant’s wife,
who was also Milam’s sister. The local authorities wanted to bury the mutilated
body quickly, but Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett’s mother, insisted that her son’s body
be returned to her in Chicago, where she placed it on view in an open-casket funeral
so that the public could bear witness. Recognizing the potential of visual evidence
to raise public awareness and to prompt demands for justice, Till’s mother made the
difficult decision to allow her son’s maimed corpse to be photographed by the press
so that everyone could see the gruesome evidence of violence exacted upon a child.
The funeral, which brought 50,000 mourners, was widely publicized. A graphic pho-
tograph of Till’s brutalized body was published alongside family photos of Till in Jet,
an American weekly magazine widely read by African Americans, and this graphic
evidence of Jim Crow segregation’s brutality was picked up broadly by the press.
Jet was titled to reflect the hectic pace of the postwar world, in which there
was no longer much time to read. Photography was well matched to this demand
for immediate communication. Ironically, Bryant and Milam were acquitted on the

Images, Power, and Politics

I 15
 FIG. 1.3
Body of Emmett Till in glass-
sealed casket on view to 50,000
mourners at the Roberts Temple
Church of God, ­Chicago,
­September 1955. Photo: C­ hicago
Sun-Times. In 2016, this casket
was put on display in the
­Smithsonian National Museum
of African American History and
Culture, Washington, D.C.

basis of the claim that the body was too mutilated

to identify (the state had originally identified the
body based on an initialed ring Till wore). The
­photograph nonetheless provided evidence of sys-
temic violence and injustice. Mamie Till made the
hard decision to allow her son’s appearance to be used to call people to political
action. A personal photograph, both a memento of a loved one and a document
of a crime, thus circulated as a work of photojournalism and a political statement,
serving as a public call to action.
The politics of looking and witnessing has long been linked to photography and
journalism, but access to cameras and to looking has not always been easy or wide-
spread. Whereas in the 1900s the public relied on photojournalists to document
events, in the 2000s phone cameras have made this kind of image-based ­witnessing
more ubiquitous. When on July 7, 2005, a series of suicide attacks targeted public
transportation in London, killing fifty-two people and injuring more than 770 others,
FIG. 1.4
the BBC received 22,000 emails and text messages from people
Eliot Ward, mobile phone image at the scene. Many of those communications included photo-
of Adam Stacey taken on Tube graphs taken at the scene with mobile phone cameras.2
train during the July 7, 2005,
London bombings
The “Ouija effect” has become ubiquitous, as people find
themselves in a position to document and send reports and
images from an ongoing crisis. It is now
routine for news outlets to solicit and
post this kind of “accidental journalism,”
“user-­
generated content,” or “­ citizen
journalism” in which the ordinary person
assumes the role of author of the latest
news. Since 2005, citizen journalism
photography has led to a major increase
in the number of images published with
news stories—a change supported by
advances in and availability of image
software and mobile technology. The

16 I Images, Power, and Politics

2015 iPhone 6 campaign, with its
slogan “shot on iPhone 6,” sells
the image quality of mobile phone
cameras. This was parodied by a
counter-billboard campaign “Also
shot on iPhone 6” in San Francisco,
reportedly produced by advertis-
ing creatives, who wanted to make
the point that most images taken
on iPhones are pretty banal. The
anonymous artists pasted next to
the official billboards large-scale
posters of over-the-top selfies, pho-
tographs more like ones often taken
by everyday iPhone users, labeling
FIG. 1.5
their parody works “Shot on an iPhone” and
“Also shot on iPhone 6”
branding them with the Apple logo, just like ­anonymously produced billboard
the original ads. The juxtapositions were doc- ad parody, 2015
umented on a Tumblr site that was quickly
taken down, presumably because Apple
FIG. 1.6
objected on grounds of copyright violation. Allan Sørensen, Middle East
Looking in itself can be a form of power. This next ­correspondent at Berlingske
mobile-phone photograph, taken on a hilltop outside the ­newspaper, Denmark, mobile
phone photograph of people
Israeli town of Sderot, shows local Israelis who have set up watching bombing of Gaza from
lounge chairs and brought snacks to watch the Israeli mili- hilltop, posted to Twitter on
July 9, 2014, with line “Sderot
tary bombard Gaza on the plain below in July of 2014. Allan
Cinema”
Sørensen, a Middle East correspondent for a Danish newspa-
per, uploaded the image to his Twitter account with the ironic
caption: “Sderot cinema.” The post was shared more than 10,000 times.3
This image powerfully demonstrates a few of the points introduced here. In
it, we see people interpreting the evening ritual of bombing Palestinians as
a public spectacle, even as visual entertainment, prior to any use of cam-
eras. The event is treated like a sports match or movie. The documentation
of looking is also a means of negotiating power: many people responded
to the uploaded photograph with public consternation about the ethics of
treating warfare as spectacle sport. It could be argued that Weegee similarly
crossed this ethical line by making his reportage public entertainment—­
rendering his photographs sensational and engaging the public at the crime
scene through his performance of “live reporting” as spectacle, which the
photograph of his car trunk “office” documents. But whereas Weegee had
to develop his photographs and hand them over to the press to circulate
on newsprint the next day, Sorensen needed simply to post his image to

Images, Power, and Politics

I 17
 Twitter to achieve mass circulation. We might see the anonymous photograph of
Weegee working out of his car trunk as a record of a nascent citizen photojournal-
ism that is now widely practiced. Through photography, readers and consumers of
news media now are also producers of news media.
Later in this book we further discuss the idea of the prosumer (the consumer
as producer) and the issue of image authorship that this raises. For now, we want
to note that the process of representation has become much more pervasive, acces-
sible, and fluid than ever before. We have more images available to us, and we
have more means of making images available. More people are taking pictures than
ever before, and the boundaries between professional and amateur are becoming
blurred. Whereas some would say that photojournalism has become democratized
by the pervasive availability of cameras, others would point out that the photojour-
nalism profession has fallen on hard times insofar as journalists must compete with
“amateur” mobile-phone photographers who are a volunteer labor force providing
free content for the press. Visual representations have become more numerous,
more ubiquitous, and easier to make.
It is not always people who take images. The rise of dashboard cameras in the
cars of everyday people, the increased use of body-mounted cameras on police,
and the proliferation of CCTV (closed circuit television) surveillance cameras
in public spaces has led to an increase in “unmanned” camerawork. University
of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing wore a body camera when he pulled
over motorist Samuel DuBose on July 19, 2015, for allegedly driving without a
front license plate, and ultimately killed him. The body-cam footage was released
simultaneously with a press announcement that Tensing would be indicted on
a murder charge. As we discuss further in Chapter 6, the use of dashboard and
body cameras has increased the ability of citizens to monitor police activity and
assess the accuracy of their statements about how events unfolded. It is difficult
to say who is the photographer or producer of these images, which derive their
authority and truth value from their status as being taken objectively, without the
selective adjustments of a human hand. In the Till and DuBose cases, the camera
can be a tool in negotiations of justice and accountability. To understand how
images are understood as documenting circumstances requires us to understand
how representation works.

Representation
The concept of representation has a specific history and meaning in the study of
visual culture, a history that is linked to the production of meaning through sym-
bolic systems. Representation refers to the use of language, marks, and images to
create meaning about the world around us. We use words to understand, describe,
and define the world as we see it, and we also use markings and symbolism this
way. Language systems are structured according to rules and conventions about

18 I Images, Power, and Politics

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
quarter, days. A day is one revolution of Terra. From Mars, say, a
Terran year is something else entirely. Mars, of course, is not too
good an example for its sidereal day is very close to Terra's. But your
Venus, with its eighteen hour day—eighteen Terran hours—sees
Terra's year as four hundred eighty-six, plus, days. On Ertene, we
have no year. We had one, once. It was composed of four hundred
twelve point seven zero four two two nine three one days, sidereal.
Now, our day is different, since the length of the solar day depends
upon the progression of the planet about its luminary. Our luminary
behaves as a moon with a high ecliptic-angle as I have explained.
No, Guy, I have been mentally converting my year to your year, by
crude approximation."
The next panel was an ornate painting of the Ertinian system,
showing—out of scale for artistic purpose—the planets and sun, with
Ertene drawing away in a long spiral.
"For many years we pursued that spiral, withdrawing from the sun by
slow degrees. Then we broke free." Charalas indicated the panel
which showed Ertene in the foreground while the clustered system
was far behind.
They passed from panel to panel, all of which were interesting to Guy
Maynard. There was a series of the first star contacted by Ertene. It
was a small system, cold and forbidding, or hot and equally
forbidding. The outer planets were in the grip of frozen air, and the
inner planets bubbled in moltenness "This system was too far out of
line to turn. It was our first star, and we might have stayed in
youthfulness. Now, we know better."
The next panel showed a dimly-lighted landscape; a portrayal of
Ertene without its synthetic sun. The luminous sky was beautiful in a
nocturnal sort of way; to Guy it was slightly nostalgic for some
unknown reason, at any rate it was the soul of sadness, that
landscape.
Charalas shook his head and then smiled. He led Guy to the next
panel, and there was a portrait of an elderly man, quite a bit older
than Charalas though the neuro-surgeon was no young man.
"Timalas," said Charalas proudly. "He gave us the next panel."
The following panel was a similar scene to the dismal one, but now
the same trees and buildings and hills and sky were illuminated by a
sun. It was a cheerful, uplifting scene compared to the soul-clouding
darkness.

Ertene was a small sphere encircled by a band of peaceful black in a

raving sky of fire and flame. Three planets fought in the death throes,
using every conceivable weapon. Space was riven with blasting
beams of energy and segregated into square areas by far-flung
cutting planes. Raging energy consumed spots on each of the
planets and the corners of the panel were tangled masses of broken
machinery and burning wreckage, and the hapless images of trapped
men. But Ertene passed through this holocaust unseen because of
Timalas' light-shield.
"He saved us that, too," said Charalas reverently. "We could not have
hoped to survive in this. Our science was not up to theirs, though the
aid of a derelict or two gave us most of their science of war. I doubt
that Terra herself could have survived. We passed unseen, though
we worried for a hundred years lest they find us."
A race of spiders overran four of the planets of the next panel. They
were unintelligent, there was a questioning air to the panel, as though
posing the query as to how this race of spiders had crossed the void.
And the picture of an Ertinian dying because contact with one of the
spiders indicated their reason for not remaining.
The next panel showed a whole system with ammoniated
atmosphere. "It was before the last panel," said Charalas, "that
Ertene became of age as far as the wanderlust went. We knew that
we could survive. We wanted no system wherein Ertene would be
alone. Of what use to civilization would a culture be if its people could
never leave the home planet?"
"No," agreed Guy. "Once a race has conquered space, they must use
it. It would restrict the knowledge of a race not to use space."
"So we decided never to accept a system wherein we could not travel
freely to other planets. Who knows, but the pathway to the planets
may be but the first, faltering step to the stars?"
"We'd never have reached the planets if we'd never flown on the air,"
agreed Guy.
"We prefer company, too," smiled Charalas, pointing out the next
panels. One was of a normal system but in which the life was not
quite ready for the fundamentals of science and therefore likely to
become slave-subject to the Ertinian mastery. The next was a system
in which the intelligent life had overrun the system and had evolved to
a high degree—and Ertene might have been subject to them if they
had remained. "Unfortunately we could learn nothing from them," said
the Ertinian. "It was similar to an ignorant savage trying to learn
something from us."
Then they came to a panel in which there were ten planets. It was a
strange collection of opposites all side by side. There were several
races, some fighting others, some friendly with others. Plenty and
poverty sat hand in hand, and in one place a minority controlled the
lives of the majority while professing to be ruled by majority-rule. Men
strived to perfect medicine and increase life-expectancy and other
men fought and killed by the hundreds of thousands. A cold and
forbidding planet was rich in essential ore, and populated by a semi-
intelligent race of cold-blooded creatures. The protectors of these
poor creatures were the denizens of a high civilization, who used
them to fight their petty fights for them, under the name of unity. For
their trouble, they took the essential ores to their home planet and
exchanged items of dubious worth. The trespass of a human by the
natives of a slightly populated moon caused the decimation of the
natives, while the humans used them by the hundreds in vivisection
since their anatomy was quite similar to the human's.
"Where is Ertene?" asked Guy.
"Ertene is not yet placed," said Charalas.
"No?" asked Guy in wonder.
"No," said Charalas with a queer smile. "Ertene is still not sure of her
position. You see, Guy, that system is Sol."

Guy Maynard stood silent, thinking. It was a blow to him, this

picturization of the worlds of Sol as seen through the eyes of a totally
alien race. His own feelings he analyzed briefly, and he knew that in
his own heart, he was willing to shade any decisions concerning the
civilization of Ertene in the Ertinian favor; had any dispute between
Ertene and a mythical dissenter, Guy would have had his decision
weighted in favor of the wanderer for one reason alone.
Ertinians were human to the last classification!
Guy smiled inwardly. "Blood is thicker than water," he thought to
himself, and he knew that while the old platitude was meant to cover
blood-relations who clung together in spite of close bonds with friends
not of blood relationship, it could very well be expanded to cover this
situation. Obviously he as a Terran would tend to support a human
race against a merely humanoid race. He would fight the Martians for
Ertene just as he would fight them for Terra.
Fighting Ertene itself was unthinkable. They were too human; Ertene
was too Terran to think of strife between the two worlds. Being of like
anatomy, they would and should cling together against the whole
universe of alien bodies.
But—
He had spoken to Charalas, to the nurses, to the groundkeepers, and
to the scientists who came to learn of him and from him. He had told
them of Terra and of the Solar System. He had explained the other
worlds in detail and his own interpretation of those other cultures.
And still they depicted Terra in no central light. Terra did not dominate
the panel. It vied with the other nine planets and their satellites for the
prominence it should have held.
What was wrong?
Knowing that he would have favored Ertene for the anatomical
reasons alone, Guy worried. Had his word-picture been so poor that
Ertene gave the other planets their place in the panel in spite of the
natural longing to place their own kind above the rest?
"I should think—" he started haltingly, but Charalas stopped him.
"Guy Maynard, you must understand that Ertene is neutral. Perhaps
the first neutral you've ever seen. Believe that, Guy, and be warned
that Ertene is capable of making her own, very discerning decision."
Guy did not answer. He knew something else, now. Ertene was not
going to be easily convinced that Sol was the place for them. She
was neutral, yes, but there was something else.
Ertene had the wanderlust!
For eons, Ertene had passed in her unseen way through the galaxy.
She had seen system after system, and the lust for travel was upon
her. Travel was her life, and had been for hundreds of generations.
Her children had been born and bred in a closed system, free from
stellar bonds. Their history was a vast storehouse of experience such
as no other planet had ever had. Every generation brought them to
another star and each succeeding generation added to the wisdom of
Ertene as it extracted or tried to extract some bit of knowledge from
each system through which Ertene passed.
With travel her natural life, the wandering planet would be loath to
cease her transient existence.
Like a man who has spent too many years in bachelorhood, flitting
like a butterfly from lip to lip, Ertene had become inured to a single
life. It would take a definite attraction to swerve her from her self-
sufficiency.
These things came to Maynard as he stood in thought. He knew then
that his was no easy job. Not the simple proposition of asking Ertene
to join her own kind in an orbit about Sol. Not the mere signing of a
pact would serve. Not the Terran-shaded history of the worlds of Sol
with the Terran egotism that did not admit that Terra could possibly be
wrong.
Ertene must be made to see the attractiveness of living in Maynard's
little universe. It must be made more attractive than the interesting
possibilities offered by the unknown worlds that lie ahead on her
course through the galaxy.
All this plus the natural reticence of Ertene to become involved in a
system that ran rife with war. The attractiveness of Sol must be so
great that Ertene would remain in spite of war and alien hatred.
And Maynard knew in his heart that he was not the one to sway them
easily. Part of his mind felt akin to their desire to roam. Even knowing
that he would not live on Ertene to see the next star he wanted to go
with them in order that his children might see it.
And yet his honor was directed at the service of Terra. His sacred
oath had been given to support and strive to the best interest of Terra
and Sol.
He put away the desire to roam with Ertene and thought once more of
the studying he must do to convince Ertene of the absolute
foolishness of continuing in their search for a more suitable star than
Sol about which to establish a residence.

Maynard turned to Charalas and saw that the elderly doctor had been
watching him intently. Before he could speak, the Ertinian said: "It is a
hard nut to crack, lad. Many have tried but none have succeeded.
Like most things that are best for people, they are the least exciting
and the most formal, and people do not react cheerfully to a formal
diet."
Maynard shook his head. "But unlike a man with ulcers, I cannot
prescribe a diet of milk lest he die. Ertene will go on living no matter
whether I speak and sway them or whether I never say another word.
I am asked to convince an entire world against their will. I can not tell
them that it is the slightest bit dangerous to go on as they have. In
fact, it may be dangerous for them to remain. In all honesty, I must
admit that Terra is not without her battle scars."
Charalas said, thoughtfully: "Who knows what is best for civilization?
We do not, for we are civilization. We do as we think best, and if it is
not best, we die and another civilization replaces us in Nature's long-
time program to find the real survivor."
He faced the panel and said, partly to himself and partly to Guy:
"Is it best for Ertene to go on through time experimenting? Gathering
the fruits of a million civilizations bound forever to their stellar homes
because of the awful abyss between the stars? For the planets all to
become wanderers would be chaos.
"Therefore is it Nature's plan that Ertene be the one planet to gather
unto herself the fruit of all knowledge and ultimately lie barren
because of the sterility of her culture? Are we to be the sponge for all
thought? If so, where must it end? What good is it? Is this some great
master plan? Will we, after a million galactic years, reach a state
where we may disseminate the knowledge we have gained, or are we
merely greedy, taking all and giving nothing?
"What are we learning? And, above all, are we certain that Ertene's
culture is best for civilization? How may we tell? The strong and best
adapted survive, and since we are no longer striving against the
lesser forces of Nature on our planet, and indeed, are no longer
striving against those of antisocial thought among our own people—
against whom or what do we fight?
"Guy Maynard, you are young and intelligent. Perhaps by some
whimsy of fate you may be the deciding factor in Ertene's
aimlessness. We are here, Guy. We are at the gates to the future. My
real reason for bringing you to the Center of Ertene is to have you
present your case to the Council."
He took Guy's arm and led him through the door at the end of the
corridor. They went into the gilt-and-ivory room with the vast
hemispherical dome and as the door slowly closed behind them, Guy
Maynard, Terran, and Charalas, Ertinian, stood facing a quarter-circle
of ornate desks behind which sat the Council.
Obviously, they had been waiting.
 IV.
Guy Maynard looked reproachfully at Charalas. He felt that he had
been tricked, that Charalas had kicked the bottom out of his argument
and then had forced him into the debate with but an impromptu
defense. He wondered how this discussion was to be conducted, and
while he was striving to collect a lucid story, part of his mind heard
Charalas going through the usual procedure for recording purposes.
"Who is this man?"
"He is Junior Executive Guy Maynard of the Terran Space Patrol."
"Explain his title."
"It is a rank of official service. It denotes certain abilities and
responsibilities."
"Can you explain the position of his rank with respect to other ratings
of more or less responsibility?"
Charalas counted off on his fingers. "From the lowest rank upward,
the following titles are used: Junior Aide, Senior Aide, Junior
Executive, Senior Executive, Sector Commander, Patrol Marshal,
Sector Marshal, and Space Marshal."
"These are the commissioned officers? Are there other ratings?"
"Yes, shall I name them?"
"Prepare them for the record. There is no need of recounting the
noncommissioned officials."
"I understand."
"How did Guy Maynard come to Ertene?"
"Maynard was rescued from a derelict spaceship."
"By whom?"
"Thomakein."
"Am I to assume that Thomakein brought him to Ertene for study?"
"That assumption is correct."
"The knowledge of the system of Sol is complete?"
"Between the information furnished by Guy Maynard and the
observations made by Thomakein, the knowledge of Sol's planets is
sufficient. More may be learned before Ertene loses contact, but for
the time, it is adequate."
"And Guy Maynard is present for the purpose of explaining the Terran
wishes in the question of whether Ertene is to remain here?"
"Correct."
The councilor who sat in the center of the group smiled at Guy and
said: "Guy Maynard, this is an informal meeting. You are to rest
assured we will not attempt to goad you into saying something you do
not mean. If you are unprepared to answer a given question, ask for
time to think. We will understand. However, we ask that you do not try
to shade your answers in such a manner as to convey erring
impressions. This is not a court of law; procedure is not important.
Speak when and as you desire and understand that you will not be
called to account for slight breaches of etiquette, since we all know
that formality is a deterrent to the real point in argument."
Charalas added: "Absolute formality in argument usually ends in the
decision going to the best orator. This is not desirable, since some of
the more learned men are poor orators, while some of the best
orators must rely upon the information furnished them by the
learned."
The center councilor arose and called the other six councilors by
name in introduction. This was slightly redundant since their names
were all present in little bronze signs on the desks. It was a
pleasantry aimed at putting the Terran at ease and offering him the
right to call them by name.

"Now," said Terokar, the center one, "we shall begin. Everything we
have said has been recorded for the records. But, Guy, we will
remove anything from the record that would be detrimental to the
integrity of any of us. We will play it back before you leave and you
may censor it."
"Thank you," said Guy. "Knowing that records are to be kept as
spoken will often deter honest expression."
"Quite true. That is why we permit censoring. Now, Guy, your wishes
concerning Ertene's alliance with Sol."
"I invite Ertene to join the Solar System."
"Your invitation is appreciated. Please understand that the
acceptance of such an invitation will change Ertene's social structure
forever, and that it is not to be taken lightly."
"I realize that the invitation is not one to accept lightly. It is a large
decision."
"Then what has Sol to offer?"
"A stable existence. The commerce of an entire system and the
friendship of another world of similar type in almost every respect.
The opportunity to partake in a veritable twinship between Ertene and
Sol, with all the ramifications that such a brotherhood would offer."
"Ertene's existence is stable, Guy. Let us consider that point first."
"How can any wandering program be considered stable?"
"We are born, we live, and we die. Whether we are fated to spend our
lives on a nomad planet or ultimately become the very center of the
universe about which everything revolves, making Ertene the most
stable planet of them all, Ertinians will continue living. When
nomadism includes the entire resources of a planet, it can not be
instable."
"Granted. But do you hope to go on forever?"
"How old is your history, Guy?"
"From the earliest of established dates, taken from the stones of
Assyria and the artifacts of Maya, some seven thousand years."
Charalas added a lengthy discussion setting the length of a Terran
year.
"Ertinian history is perhaps a bit longer," said Terokar. "And so who
can say 'forever'?"
"No comment," said Guy with a slight laugh. "But my statements
concerning stability are not to be construed as the same type of
instability suffered by an itinerant human. He has no roots, and few
friends, and he gains nothing nor does he offer anything to society.
No, I am wrong. It is the same thing. Ertene goes on through the eons
of wandering. She has no friends and no roots and while she may
gain experience and knowledge of the universe just as the tramp will,
her ultimate gain is poor and her offering to civilization is zero."
"I dispute that. Ertene's life has become better for the experience she
has gained and the knowledge, too."
"Perhaps. But her offering to civilization?"
"We are not a dead world. Perhaps some day we may be able to offer
the storehouses of our knowledge to some system that will need it.
Perhaps we are destined to become the nucleus of a great, galactic
civilization."
"Such a civilization will never work as long as men are restrained as
to speed of transportation. Could any pact be sustained between
planets a hundred light-years apart? Indeed, could any pact be
agreed upon?"
"I cannot answer that save to agree. However, somewhere there may
be some means of faster-than-light travel and communication. If this
is found, galactic-wide civilization will not only be possible but a
definite expectation."
"You realize that you are asking for Ertene a destiny that sounds
definitely egotistic?"
"And why not? Are you not sold on the fact that Terra is the best
planet in the Solar System?"
"Naturally."
"Also," smiled Charalas, "the Martians admit that Mars is the best
planet."
"Granted then that Ertene is stable. Even granting for the moment
that Ertene is someday to become the nucleus of the galaxy. I still
claim that Ertene is missing one item." Guy waited for a moment and
then added: "Ertene is missing the contact and commerce with other
races. Ertene is self-sufficient and as such is stagnant as far as new
life goes. Life on Ertene has reached the ultimate—for Ertene.
Similarly, life on Terra had reached that point prior to the opening of
space. Life must struggle against something, and when the struggle
is no longer possible—when all possible obstruction has been
circumvented—then life decays."
"You see us as decadent?"
"Not yet. The visiting of system after system has kept you from total
decadence. It is but a stasis, however. Unless one has the samples of
right and wrong from which to choose, how may he know his own
course?"

"Of what difference is it?" asked the councilor named Baranon. "If
there is no dissenting voice, if life thrives, if knowledge and science
advance, what difference does it make whether we live under one
social order or any other? If thievery and wrongdoing, for instance,
could support a system of social importance, and the entire
population lives under that code and thrives, of what necessity is it to
change?"
"Any social order will pyramid," said Guy. "Either up or down."
"Granted. But if all are prepared to withstand the ravages of their
neighbors, and are eternally prepared to live under constant strife, no
man will have his rights trod upon."
"But what good is this eternal wandering? This everlasting eye upon
the constantly receding horizon? This never ending search for the
proper place to stop in order that this theoretical galactic civilization
may start? At Ertene's state of progress, one place will be as good as
any other," said Guy.
"Precisely, except that some places are definitely less desirable.
Recall, Guy, that Ertene needs nothing."
"I dispute that. Ertene needs the contact with the outside worlds."
"No."
"You are in the position of a recluse who loves his seclusion."
"Certainly."
"Then you are in no position to appreciate any other form of social
order."
"We care for no other social order."
"I mentioned to Charalas that in my eyes, you are wrong. That I am
being asked to prescribe for a patient who will not die for lack of my
prescription. I can not even say that the patient will benefit directly.
My belief is as good as yours. I believe that Ertene is suffering
because of her seclusion and that her peoples will advance more
swiftly with commerce between the planets—and once again in
interstellar space, Ertene will have no planets with which to conduct
trade."
"And Sol, like complex society, will never miss the recluse. Let the
hermit live in his cave, he is neither hindering nor helping civilization."
"Indirectly, the hermit hinders. He excites curiosity and the wonder if a
hermit's existence might not be desirable and thus diverts other
thinkers to seclusion."
"But if the hermit withdraws alone and unnoticed, no one will know of
the hermitage, and then no one will wonder."
"But I know, and though no one else in the Solar System knows, I am
trying to bring you into our society. I have the desire of brotherhood,
the gregarious instinct that wants to be friend with all men. It annoys
me—as it annoys all men—to see one of us alone and unloved by his
fellows. I have a burning desire to have Ertene as a twin world with
Terra."
"But Ertene likes her itinerant existence. The fires that burn beyond
the horizon are interesting. Also," smiled Terokar, "the grass is
greener over there."
"One day you will come to the end of the block," said Guy, "and find
that the grass is no greener anywhere, with the exception that you
now have no more grass to look at, plus the sorry fact that you cannot
return. A million galactic years from now, Ertene will have passed
through the galaxy and will find herself looking at intergalactic space.
Then what?"
"Then our children will learn to live in a starless sky for a hundred
thousand generations. Solarians live in a sky of constant placement;
Ertene's sky is ever changing and all sky maps are obsolete in thirty
or forty years. You must remember that to us, wandering is the
normal way of life. Some of us believe that we may eventually return
to our parent sun. We may. But all of us believe that we would find
our parent sun no more interesting than others. No Guy, I doubt that
we will stop there either."
"You are assuming that you will not remain at Sol?"
"We are a shy planet. We do not like to change our way of life. You
are asking us to give up our life and to accept yours. It is similar to a
man asking a woman to marry. But a woman is not completely
reversed in her life when she marries. Here you are asking us to
cleave unto you forever—and there is no bond of love to soften the
hard spots."
"I did mention the bond of brotherhood," said Guy.
"Brotherhood with what?" asked Terokar. "You ask us to enter a bond
of twinship with a planet that is the center of strife. You ask us in the
name of similarity to join you—and help you gain mastery over the
Solar System."
"And why not?"
"Which of you is right? Is the Terran combine more righteous than the
Martian alliance?"
"Certainly."
"Why?"
Guy asked for a moment to think. The room was silent for a moment
and then he said, slowly and painfully: "I can think of no other reason
than the trite and no-answer reason: 'We're right because we're right!'
The Martian combine fights us to gain the land and the commerce
that we have taken because of superiority in space."
"A superiority given merely because of sheer size," said Baranon.
"The Martians, raised under a gravity of less than one third of Terra's
find it difficult to keep pace with the Terrans, who can live under three
times as much acceleration. Battle under such conditions is unfair,
and the fact that the Martians have been able to survive indicates that
their code is not entirely wrong."
Charalas nodded. "Any code that is entirely in error will not be able to
survive."
"So," said Terokar, "you ask us to join your belligerent system. You
ask us to emerge from our pleasure and join you in a struggle for
existence. You ask that we give up the peace that has survived for a
thousand years, and in doing so you ask that we come willingly and
permit our cities to be war-scarred and our men killed. You ask that
we join in battle against a smaller, less adapted race that still is able
to survive in spite of its ill-adaption to the rigors of space."
Guy was silent.
"Is that the way of life? Must we fight for our life? Strife is deplorable,
Guy Maynard, and I am saying that to you, who come of a planet
steeped in strife. You wear a uniform—or did—that is dedicated to the
job of doing a better job of fighting than the enemy. Continual warlike
activity has no place on Ertene.
"Plus one other thing, Guy Maynard. You are honorable and your
intent is clear. But your fellows are none too like you. Ertene would
become the playground of the Solar System. There would be
continual battles over Ertene, and Ertene with her inexperience in
warfare would be forced to accept the protection of Terra. That
protection would break down into the same sort of protection that is
offered the Plutonians by a handful of Terrans. In exchange for
'protection' against enemies that would possibly be no better or
worse, the Plutonians are stripped of their metal. They are not
accorded the privilege of schooling because they are too ignorant to
enter even the most elementary of schools. Besides, schooling would
make them aware of their position and they might rebel against the
system that robs them of their substance under the name of
'protection.' Protection? May the Highest Law protect me from my
protectors!" Terokar's lips curled slightly. "Am I not correct? Have not
the Plutonians the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? It
would be a heavy blow to Terra if the third planet were forced to pay
value for the substance that comes from Pluto."
"After all," said Guy, "if Terra hadn't got there first, Mars would be
doing the same thing."
"Granted," said Baranon. "Absolutely correct. But two wrongs do not
make a right. Terra is no worse than Mars. But that does not excuse
either of them. They are both wrong!"
"Are you asking Terra to change its way of life?" demanded Guy.
"You are asking Ertene to change. We have the same privilege."
"Obviously in a system such as ours a completely altruistic society
would be wiped out."
"Obviously," said Baranon.
"Then—"
"Then Ertene will change its way of life—providing Terra changes
hers."
"Mars—"
"Mars will have to change hers, too. Can you not live in harmony?"
"Knowing what the Martians did to me—can you expect me to greet
one of them with open arms?"
"Knowing what you have done to them, I wouldn't expect either one of
you to change your greetings. No, Guy, I fear that Ertene will continue
on her path until such a time as we meet a system that is less
belligerent and more adapted to our way of life."
"Then I have failed?"
"Do not feel badly. You have failed, but you were fighting a huge,
overwhelming force. You fought the inheritance of a hundred
generations of wanderers. You fought the will of an integrated people
who deplore strife. You fought the desire of everyone on Ertene, and
since no Ertinian could change Solar society, we cannot expect a
Terran to change Ertinian ideals. You failed, but it is no disgrace to fail
against such an overwhelming defense."
Guy smiled weakly. "I presume that I was fighting against a
determined front?"
"You were trying to do the most difficult job of all. In order to have
succeeded, you would first have had to unsell us on our firm
convictions, and then sell us the desirability of yours. A double job,
both uphill."
"Then I am to consider the matter closed?"
"Yes. We have decided not to remain."
"You decided that before I came in," said Guy bitterly.
"We decided that a thousand years before you were born, so do not
feel bitter."
"I presume that a change in your plans is out of the question even
though further information on Sol's planets proves you wrong?"
"It will never be brought up again."
"I see," said Guy unhappily. "Part of my desire to convince you was
the hope of seeing my home again."
"Oh, but you will," said Charalas.

Guy was dumfounded. He could hardly believe his ears. He asked for
a repeat, and got it. It was still amazing. To Guy, it was outright
foolishness. He wouldn't have trusted anyone with such a secret. To
permit him to return to Terra with the knowledge he had—
"Charalas, what would prevent me from bringing my people to
Ertene? I could bring the forces of Terra down about your very ears."
"But you will not. We have a strict, value-even trade to offer you."
"But it would be so easy to keep me here."
"We could not restrain you without force. And if we must rely upon
your honor, we'd be equally reliant whether you be here or on Terra."
"Here," said Guy dryly, "I'd be away from temptation. If I were tempted
to tell, there'd be no one to tell it to."
"We must comply with an ancient rule," explained Terokar. "It says
specifically that no man without Ertinian blood may remain on Ertene.
It was made to keep the race pure when we were still about our
parent sun and has never been revoked. We wouldn't revoke it for
you alone."
"But permitting me to go free would be sheer madness."
"Not quite. We are mutually indebted to one another, Guy. There is
the matter of knowledge. You gave freely of yours, we gave you ours.
We have gained some points that were missing in our science, you
have a number of points that will make you rich, famous, and
remembered. Use them as your own, only do it logically in order that
they seem to be discoveries of your own. You admit the worth of
them?"
"Oh, but yes," said Guy eagerly. "Wonderful—"
"Then there is no debt for knowledge?"
"If any, I am in your debt."
"We'll call it even," said Baranon, dryly.
"Then there is the matter of life," said Terokar. "You know how you
were found?"
Guy shook his head in wonder. "I had been through the Martian idea
of how to get information out of a reluctant man," he said slowly. "I
know that their methods result in a terrible mindless state which to my
own belief is worse than death itself. I know that as I lost
consciousness, I prayed for death to come, even though I knew that
they would not permit it."
"We found you that way. You know. And we brought you back to life.
You owe us that."
"Indeed I do."
"Then for your life, we demand our life in return."
"I do not understand."
"Your life is yours. We ask that you say nothing of us—for we feel that
we will die if we are found. At least, the integrity of Ertene is at stake.
In any event, we will not be taken, you may as well know that. And
when I say die, I mean that Ertene will not go on living in the way we
want her to live. Therefore you will disclose nothing that will point our
way to anyone."
"And you are willing that I should return to Terra with such an oath?
What of my oath to Terra?"
"Do you feel that your presence on Ertene will benefit Terra in some
small way?" asked Charalas.
"Now that you have given me the things we spoke of before, I do."
"Then," said Charalas, "consider this point. You may not return unless
you swear to keep us secret. You may not give Terra the benefit of
your knowledge unless you deprive them of Ertene. Is that clear?"
"If I may not return to Terra, and may not remain on Ertene, I can
guess the other alternative and will admit that I do not like it. On the
returning angle, about all I can do is to justify myself in my own mind
that I have done all that I can by bringing these scientific items back
with me. Since doing the best I can for Terra includes keeping your
secret, I can do that also. But tell me, how do you hope to cover the
fact that I've been missing for almost a year? That will take more than
mere explanation."
"The process is easy," said Charalas. "We have one of the lifeships
from the derelict. It was slightly damaged in the blast. It is
maneuverable, but unwieldy. Evidence has been painstakingly
forged. Apparently you will have broken your straps under the shock
of the blast—and before the torture reached its height—and you
found yourself in a derelict with no one left alive but yourself. You
were hurt, mentally, and didn't grasp the situation clearly. There was
no way to signal your plight in secrecy, and open signaling would
have been dangerous since you were too close to Mars.
"You found the lifeship and waited until you could safely take off. The
derelict took a crazy course, according to the recorded log in your
own handwriting, and headed for interstellar space. You took off at
the safe time and have been floating free in the damaged lifeship.
You've been on a free orbit for the best part of a year."
"Sounds convincing enough."
"The evidence includes empty air cans, your own fingerprints on
everything imaginable, a dulled can opener and the remnants of can
labels that have fallen into nooks and crannies of the ship. The water-
recovery device has been under constant operation and examination
will show about a year's accumulation of residual matter. A scratch-
mark calendar has been kept on the wall of the lifeship, and daily it
has been added to. That is important since the wall will show more
oxidation in the scratches made a year ago than the ones made
recently. The accumulators of the ship have been run down as if in
service while you were forcing the little ship into its orbit, and the
demand recorder shows how the drain was used. The lights in the
ship have been burned, and the deposits of fluorescent material in
the tubes have been used about the calculated number of hours.
Books have been nearly worn out from re-reading and they were
used with fingerprint gloves though they were studied by us.
Instruments and gadgets are strewn about the ship in profusion,
indicating the attempts of an intelligent man trying to kill time. Also
you will find the initial findings on the energy collector we used in
conjunction with the light-shield.
"Now, yourself. Into your body we will inject the hormones that occur
with fear and worry. You will not enjoy a bit of atmosphobia, but
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