nearside n.

They say that’s what drove people to the Farside: the constant reminder of what they had lost, always there in the sky. It must have been hard, especially to the Earthborn. Whatever the reason, no-one had lived on the Nearside for almost a century. All the original settlements had dwindled as people had moved to the comforting empty sky of Farside.

Her sled was coasting through a series of connected ellipses, bound for nearside. Earth was rising, a glinting crystal globe above the warped moon.

I was in the Terminal Institute for Enemies of Humanity, three kilometers beneath Ptolemaeus, on the Nearside.

I remembered the approach of the aliens: two great spacefaring beings like grotesque, beautiful, ornamental fish a kilometer long, two kilometers high, half a kilometer wide, wrapped round with convoluted sparkling sails and veils, shimmering with powers and forces that we couldn’t fathom. All contact with Earth from our transmitter on Nearside was disrupted, lost.

Installing a telescope on the nearside wasn’t very smart but the early bureaucracy made some pretty big errors here that we are still trying to correct.

Earth was fiercely bright against the black sky; if the moon had an atmosphere, Earthsets—only visible from a moving vehicle, since at all locations on nearside, the Earth hung motionless in the sky—would have been spectacular.