“I straightened up, took some more air, bent down, touched it, and pulled on the part that was showing. It came up without any trouble, and I sat down and went over it, brushing off the dirt. It was a bone, a human pelvis, and there was not any doubt about it. That’s a damn strange thing to be inside of somebody, I said to myself. And it was, and it is. What I know about skeletons has to do with animals and fish, and I had never seen anything like this except in the medical and first-aid books my father kept in the cabin. But there the thing was, with the sun leveling onto it and then into it and through it–and it hit me that I could turn it–I was right there, and no one else–so that the light would come down through the hole in it and make a shape on the ground, on the slant yellow dirt of the hill, and it did, though not just like I would’ve thought.”

                     --James Dickey, To the White Sea, 1993

“AT FIRST: A SPECK OF LIGHT AND DUST. AN ASTEROID, PERHAPS. ONE MORE CHUNK OF LIFELESS ROCK, DRIFTING AIMLESSLY IN FROM DEEP SPACE…AND PAST THE BLOOD-SCARRED FACE OF MARS, THAT ONCE WAS ALSO GOD OF WAR. NEXT: IT ROLLS LIKE A POCK-MARKED MARBLE ACROSS THE BLACK HEAVENS, NEARLY BRUSHING THE MANY-CRATERED MOON. NOW: IT SETTLES COMFORTABLY, EFFORTLESSLY, INTO AN ORBIT AROUND THE EARTH, AND WE GET A MUCH CLOSER LOOK AT IT…AND INTO IT…AND IT REALLY ISN’T JUST AN ASTEROID, AFTER ALL…UNLESS ALL ASTEROIDS CONCEAL (BENEATH THEIR STONE-COLD SKINS) A HUNDRED COILED MILES OF CORRIDORS…MACHINES WHICH HUM AND SOFTLY WHINE…AND NOTHING SHOWING OUTSIDE TO SUGGEST WHAT LIES WITHIN…SAVE A SMALL DEFIANT ANTENNA WHICH JUTS PROUDLY INTO THE DARKNESS…AND TURNS…AND TURNS…AND TURNS…”

                     --Roy Thomas, MARVEL PREMIERE, Vol. 1, No. 1, 
                       "And Men Shall Call Him...Warlock!," 1971