Under The Surface

Starfarers, 47-48.

The Envoy crew, returned to Earth eleven thousand years after their departure, are in the same position as HG Wells' nineteenth century Time Traveller in 802,701 AD. Everything is so different that it will take time to understand it. The Time Traveller finds Eloi on the surface but Morlocks lurking underground. What lurks underground figuratively speaking when Envoy returns?

There are what look like complex, powerful, self-sufficient installations on the Moon and in Earth orbit. Solar energy is beamed to Earth where there:

"...appeared to be a widespread, buried electrical network..." (p. 445)

There is also an Edenic ecology with scattered villages, a few small cities and scant aerial traffic. The night side is not illuminated. Is this a basis for intellectual and creative dynamism or just social stagnation?

Science has become a body of knowledge, not a search. Interpretations of natural law are elaborated, not revolutionized. Technology has not been changed for millennia. The competitiveness that drives innovation is absent but is there no inquisitiveness or inventiveness?

Robotics and nanotech have made necessities and maybe also comforts as free as air. There is no obvious coercion to control distribution or stabilize population but need there be? Nansen suggests that social pressure might be enough.

Is this uniform stable equilibrium stagnant? Rare interstellar visits have no impact. People speak to Sundaram of progress but he cannot see it yet.