Cor Serpentis

Cor Serpentis, ‘The Heart of the Snake’, is the brightest star in the constellation of Serpens. In Ivan Yefremov’s novella of the same name, the planet revolving around ?or holds a cool, shimmering, radioactive biome of purple icebergs and acidic oceans that is beautiful but nothing like ours — in fact, deadly to humans. What would a living forest smell like in a world unimaginably distant and savage, powered by the light of a strange star? Would it have any resemblance to the smells of the Earth, be somehow relatable to us, earthlings? These questions are answered in Cor Serpentis, an alien woody fragrance from another solar system.

A jungle in deep space — imagined by Stéphanie Bakouche.