don't wanna take my test

From John M. Ford's brilliant sprawling alt-history epic The Dragon Waiting, page 59-60 in my SFBC copy or bottom of 68 in the white paperback edition featuring the chick with too much eyeshadow on the cover. (Setting: a party at Lorenzo de' Medici's place, and a discussion about theatre and theatrical effects.)

Scala was talking about showing Phoebus's chariot with wheels of genuine fire. Poliziano wanted to stage the burning of Rome. Lucrezia de' Medici suggested flame-breathing serpents, and Pulci, irreverent as always, proposed a war among the gods, held in the sky with weapons shooting fire.

Then the syncretist Ficino, sitting hunched with Lorenzo standing at his side, put all the ideas together, along with Lorenzo's new song: chariots blazing between the worlds as gods fought rebel gods, the destruction of a city-- a planet?-- by fire, beasts beyond imaginging both to terrify and befriend the heroes.

(at this point the giggling began)

"It needs a title," Signorina Scala said.

Pulci had his mouth open, but Ficino beat him to the pun.

"It shall be dedicated to Isis and Mars," he said, "and we will call it Stella Martis."

I nearly fell off my chair. War's Star, indeed.