Soviets on Venus

<p class=ql-align-justify><em>Soviets on Venus</em> explores a remote jeweled casket. It construes an alien neighbor as it reconceptualizes an underrated scientific breakthrough: the series of unnamed probes piloted to Venus by the USSR between 1961 and the mid-80's. The missions were called the Venera program. These fantastical spacecraft transmitted data vivid photographs and poetic energy back to Earth. Some piloted through the morning star's magma-hot swampy atmosphere as balloons. A few smashed themselves into aeolian canyons or upon alien tufa. A handful simply melted away into silvery pools. And several ended in disaster. These fantastic probes form a sediment of verse from which a strange beauty emerges.</p><p><br></p>