Horror And Hope

That post title summarizes the culmination of Poul Anderson's The Byworlder. There is a horrific murder. Human beings acquire superior alien technology but it will not be monopolized by any nation-state. The Byworlder culture, which favors diversity, not control, is the answer.

At the end of James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time, a small group acquires some information about many future events and might try to choose which events should occur but decides that all must:

"'To Whom it may concern: Thy will, not mine.'"
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), CHAPTER TEN, p. 104.

That same openness and optimism ends The Byworlder.