Meanwhile, in our timeline, planets that might be habitable continue to be detected. If the Webb Telescope were to discover advanced civilizations within several light years of Sol, then that might help to unite some of mankind and direct their attention outward.
"Do we want to remain big people in a tiny world or to become a little people in a vaster world? That is the ultimate climax towards which I have directed my narrative.
"J. B.
"17 January 2021"
-Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1965), EPILOGUE, p. 219.
11 comments:
It might unite some people. Others would immediately start calculating how they could use it against their neighbors... 8-).
That I do know.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. Because it's a certainty some humans would try to get their hands on advanced technology, to use against their rivals and enemies.
And it's safe to say the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent life would have an enormous impact on us! Some of Anderson's stories touches on that, such as "The Word to Space" or "Peek! I See You!"
Ad astra! Sean
There's an old joke that the IRA would gladly sign a pact with Beelzebub, if only he promised to drag the English to hell first and them last.
Something of the sort happened in WWII...8-)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha!!! Human beings are too often like that!
I recalled just now how you commented the Venetian Republic was never willing to let go of a grudge!
Ad astra! Sean
Was that comment on the Venetian Republic somewhere on this blog?
Now I want to know a bit about that history.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, it was, in the context of how Stirling commented on how aggressive and vengeful the Venetians could be. E.g., it was the Venetians who diverted the Fourth Crusade from the Holy Land--and used the Crusaders for help in attacking the Byzantine Empire, culminating with the appalling Sack of Constantinople in 1206. The Republic grabbed its full share of the loot, in both territories and treasures, from the shattered Empire.
Ad astra! Sean
So what had the East Roman Empire done that the Venetians felt required revenge?
I note that damaging the Empire so badly meant that it later got taken over by the Turks who were a *much* greater danger to the Venetian Republic.
Kaor, Jim!
The origins of the crime of 1206 goes back about 24 years, to the 1180's. The Venetians were an aggressive and often not very scrupulous mercantile people. They had outposts and "factories" all around the eastern Mediterranean, including the Eastern Empire. The Venetians made themselves so unpopular there was a massacre of thousands of Venetians living in the Empire. And that was not forgotten or forgiven in Venice!
You are right, the Sack of Constantinople so badly weakened the Empire that it became unable to drive back the Ottoman Turks after they began their rise to power around 1320. The Turks were a danger to all Europe, not just Venice.
Ad astra! Sean
"factories"
An interesting case of a word totally changing meaning, from somewhere a 'factor' lived who ran a trading post for a trading company centered elsewhere, to a place where goods are manufactured
The Hudson Bay Company set up a bunch of such 'factories' along the coast of Hudson Bay. I once visited "Moose Factory" at the south end of James Bay.
Kaor, Jim!
Correct, and that's why I placed "factories" within double quotes, to alert readers the word had different meanings at different times.
BTW, I even have a Hudson's Bay Company blanket!
Incidentally, Anderson tells us a lot more about the Venetians in his historical novel, ROGUE SWORD, first pub. in 1960, little of it sympathetic to them! It's a relatively early book and Anderson might have been more nuanced about Venice 20 or 30 years, but the picture we get seems to reflect what other Europeans thought of the Venetians: courageous, ruthless, avaricious, unscrupulous, often cruel.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment