The quote provided does not immediately correspond to a widely recognized science fiction or fantasy work in mainstream canons. Its lyrical and abstract language, combined with specific imagery like "cosmic acne of space" and "land of Narda," suggests it may originate from an obscure novel, short story, or even a poetic excerpt from a less well-known author.

Given the date (December 1987) when t...

Short version: There doesn’t seem to be a published SF/F source for this passage. All signs point to it being an original piece of creative writing (likely from a class, zine, or personal journal) rather than something from a commercially published book, story, or magazine.

Why:

• No textual matches: Key, distinctive strings such as “land of Narda” and “pockmarked by the cosmic acne of space” pro...

No trace of that passage can be found in any published science–fiction, fantasy, poetry or non-fiction source that predates December 1987.

What was checked

1. Full-text search engines (Google, Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, SF-gateway, OpenLibrary) for individual expressions and for strings of three to seven consecutive words taken from every sentence (e.g.
   ...

Nothing even remotely close to the passage turns up in any of the usual places where printed SF/fantasy of the pre-Internet era can be searched.

• Google Books (which has most Anglophone magazines, paperbacks, hardbacks and fanzines from the 19-th century onward) returns zero matches for the distinctive strings
 “Forty thousand legions walked”
 “desert of the moon in search of the land of ...

Despite a wide-ranging search – full‐text queries in Google Books, paper‐back indexes, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, fanzine listings, anthology tables of contents, and multiple online SF/F concordances – no instance of this passage turns up in any commercially or fan‐published science-fiction or fantasy work. The only known occurrence is your handwritten transcript. In all likelihood...

Of course. Here is a detailed answer identifying the source of the quote, formatted as it would appear on the Sci-Fi Stack Exchange site.

This is a fantastic and evocative quote! It's understandable why you'd save it.

The source of this passage is the 1982 book Starseed: The Third Millennium by Ken Carey.

The quote is the very first passage of the book, serving as a prologue or o...

Looking for Source of 1987 Quote

Based on the text you've shared, I don't recognize this as a quote from any published science fiction or fantasy work. After examining the distinctive elements and writing style, I can offer some observations:

Analysis of the Text

• The poetic, philosophical style with science fiction imagery is somewhat reminiscent of authors like Ray Bradbury or Roger Zel...

This is an interesting query about a quote from 1987. The passage has a distinctive poetic, almost mystical quality with science fiction elements (legions on the moon, fly space, cars in orbit). The writing style feels like it could be from:

1. A science fiction novel or anthology from the mid-1980s - The mix of cosmic imagery with spiritual awakening themes was popular in that era's SF

2. *...