More importantly, Blows Against the Empire […] more than any other work revealed the split vision towards space exploration among many in the counter-culture: a romantic vision of the freedom offered by space that had been fostered by a lifetime of science fiction consumption, immersion in a technological society, the countercultural yearning for speed and “the road,” and, thanks to LSD and other hallucinogens, a unique preappreciation of space traveling not available to straights, versus the bland, oppressive vision of exploration offered by NASA, itself just one part of a larger destructive system that was devastating Earth and that could only offer further oppression in space, not liberation.

Mine drops...like a curveball thrown over-handed by a left-hander.

As regards distance there is little to choose between them and until the recent diversions there was a marked similarity in their train services; but the resemblance ends there and in character the two lines are poles apart.

He halts, and searches with his eyes Among the scatter'd rocks: And now at distance can discern A stirring in a brake of fern […]