Thursday 30 April 2015

Section 3 Revisited

(Queen Anne Hill, Seattle, with views of the Space Needle and the sea.)

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

For Hanno, "'...cigarettes are faute de mieux.'" (p. 378) I had not known what that meant.

Giannotti thinks that, if Hanno goes public as an immortal:

discovering the secret of immortality will become everyone's top priority;
since knowing that it is possible is half the battle, it might be solved quite soon;
meanwhile, the prospect will discourage "'...war, arms race, terrorism, despotism...'" (p. 382).

Hanno rightly replies that it would cause chaos. As Arthur Clarke one said, "If we abolish death, we will have to abolish birth." One Torchwood series had the excellent premise that, for a while, everyone stopped dying, even an electrocuted child rapist and murderer. Governments had to start rounding up all the people who should have died...

If Hanno were outed as an immortal, then he would destroy the evidence that he had shown Giannotti while he and his three colleagues would go to ground.

120 posts and the last day of the month so no more posts until tomorrow at the earliest although I might find time to read comments.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

IOW, Hanno continued to agree with Cardinal Richelieu that for him and the other immortals to reveal themselves as such would be far more likely bring on or worsen chaos and upheavals. That the times still were not right for them to reveal themselves as immortals.

Sean