Starship Asterisk*

heehaw wrote:
We are so incredibly lucky on this Earth, an oasis in an inconceivably vast cosmic desert!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Desert wrote:

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<<The Deadly Desert is the magical desert that completely surrounds the fictional Land of Oz. On maps, the eastern quadrant of the desert is called the Deadly Desert, while the other three quadrants of desert are called the Shifting Sands, the Impassable Desert, and the Great Sandy Waste.

The desert was originally described as dangerous as any natural desert but no more. Indeed, in The Marvelous Land of Oz, Mombi tries to escape through it in the form of a griffin and Glinda chases her over the sands. In Ozma of Oz, it has become a magical desert with life-destroying sands and noxious fumes, a feature that remained constant through the rest of the series. Princess Ozma crosses the desert with her whole court by use of an infinitely unrolling carpet.

Anyone who sets foot into the sand of any of these deserts turns into sand themselves. The desert is used as a literary device to explain why Oz is essentially cut off from the rest of the world and the rest of Nonestica. However, it has been crossed several times by people from within Oz and from the outside world, with applied ingenuity, with magical assistance, or through unusual natural phenomena.

In the film Return to Oz, Dorothy Gale crosses the edge of the Desert by stepping upon stones. Later, the pack of Wheelers working for Mombi fail to get across the Deadly Desert in pursuit of Dorothy and the Gump, who cross the desert to reach the Nome King's mountain. Six of the Wheelers fall into the desert and are subsequently turned into sand and killed. The seven remaining Wheelers later return with Princess Mombi and cross the desert through the tunnel dug underneath the desert to reach the Nome King's mountain.>>