Concluding The Fleet Of Stars

The Fleet Of Stars.

Guthrie to Fenn:

"'Machinery turns out your necessities of life, essentially for free, but this makes your lives depend on the machinery and whoever or whatever administers it." (29, p. 370)

To be free in such a future, we, the entire population, will have to understand and control the machinery that produces the necessities of life. An optimum population will be one that both enjoys the full benefits of an advanced technology and possesses practical skills enabling it to cope, and hopefully to survive, if technology fails. Although such omnicompetence transcends present capacities, future generations, assuming of course their existence, will have learned from centuries of conflictive history and in particular from many collective mistakes. The present period is either an endgame or a collective learning experience. I think that it has to be either one or the other.

Arguing with Chuan, Guthrie does not claim moral superiority but does:

"'...claim our right to freedom.'

"He fell silent, searching for words." (31, p. 399)

 

At such a dramatic pause in the dialogue, we expect the elements and most probably the wind to punctuate the text and, sure enough:

 

"The cat jumped from its chair went to a viewport, and stood on its hind legs, gazing forth to where a silkentree tossed in the wind out of the wilderness." (ibid.)

 

That the wind blows out of the wilderness is surely comment enough.