Saturday 9 March 2019

"Outmoded Things" by Nancy Kress II

For reference, see here.

Teenagers needing therapy must relate to adults who might also have problems. Anne's mother is strong but hostile. Luke, the therapist, a second-generation colonist, is sympathetic but old and sick, in fact dying - in fact dies at the end of the story, consoled by a vision projected by Shadow-of-a-Dream.

We have come a long way from Commissioner Svoboda at the very beginning of the first story in the Rustum History. Rolandic events happen centuries (at least) later in another planetary system. But the series is a fictional history with an interstellar setting.

Nancy Kress first considered writing a sequel to Anderson's Brain Wave but could anyone have done that? Most of the human race has passed far beyond our ken.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, it would have been almost impossibly difficult to write a sequel to BRAIN WAVE. If only because of the sheer difficulty of somehow crafting a story enabling readers to even care about the "transformed" humans leaving Earth at the end of story. They had become too alien and DIFFERENT from us.

It might have been possible to write a story focusing on the ex-morons and "uplifted" animals remaining on Earth at the end of BRAIN WAVE.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
That occurred to me - but maybe that would not have been so interesting.
You can tell that life is busier here when I post less.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree. I did wonder if such a "sequel" of the kind I speculated about would have been all that interesting.

And I don't mind you sometimes taking time to do other things!

Sean