“Unreal Estate” by Virgiliu Pop
Ken Murphy / 4:35 am March 12th, 2006
Published in 2006 by Lulu Press, it weighs in at 175 pages. A few interesting idiomatic errors, and a couple of grammar errors.
***Full Disclosure: Virg & I were both delegates at the Space Generation Forum that was part of the UNISPACE III conference in 1999. We’ve kept in touch off and on since then, but I’m not really a law guy.***
Our story opens with an advert dating to 1901 and noting that the Big Brick Store boasts ‘There is nothing that you can want for Christmas that we cannot get for you, unless you should want a piece of the Moon or something equally unreasonable’ before leaping back to 1756 and the lands of Prussia. This is Exhibit A in Mr. Pop’s voyage of discovery in what is essentially a Title Search on celestial bodies.
We begin with the story of King Frederick the Great, and his bestowal upon one Aul Jürgens title to the Moon. This was by virtue of a document noting the gratitude of the King for Mr. Jürgens curative powers in cases of gout, and that the Moon should pertain to the Jürgens family, to be passed down the generations to the youngest born son until the end of time. Less than a footnote to history, this fact remained dormant until 1999, when a descendant of the original Jürgens, one Martin Jürgins, sent what could be described as a Cease & Desist letter to one Dennis Hope, who created the Lunar Embassy to sell Deed rights to the general public (as well as bestow them upon key public figures). The following media publicity echoed around the world, though it wasn’t for the first time.
We then jump to 1937, when the registration of claims on the Moon and other celestial bodies really started to begin in earnest. We find that in the ending days WWII people were starting to look beyond, and realizing the technology was starting to become available that could make such claims a reality. The research ranges far and wide, and Mr. Pop has certainly done his homework on this one. Some of the examples take things perhaps right to the edge, like the chapter on laying claim to Uranus. From Registrars records to letters to public figures and institutions, from fundraisers for schools and planetariums to hucksters hustling a profit, though certainly perhaps with some sense of intangible satisfaction. We travel around the globe, from Prussia to Mexico to Japan. The footnote section weighs in at 26 pages and contains over 650 citations, many of which are internet addresses (and yeah, there are ibids in there as well).
Virgiliu has woven an amazingly rich story of individual hubris laying claim to the heavens. He notes of course that animus must be matched with corpus to really lay claim to any piece of dirt. It is not clear how he really views the solution to the question of how claims will be recognized on non-terrestrial bodies, but he certainly makes it evident that something will have to happen to address the question, because there certainly will be disputes in the future, and some mechanism must be found to resolve them.
But that is a post for another time. ‘Unreal Estate’ is a fascinating read, though it raises more questions than it answers. Legal training not needed, though a dictionary for some of the latin terms would be helpful. I’ll give this one just shy of a Full Moon.