Lies

The last communication from Earth to Alpha Centauri:

"It is evident from your recent communications that you and the limited artificial intelligences you employ no longer find us comprehensible. Unless you care for news of what unintegrated humans are left on Earth, and we project that that would be of no more significance to you than to us, further contact is purposeless and probably, for you, inadvisable."

-Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars (London, 1994), 61, pp. 509-510.

Centuries later, the Prefect of the Synesis states publicly that:

"'The last message suggested, only suggested, that correspondence would get correspondingly difficult in the future.'"

-The Fleet Of Stars, 6, p. 78.

- and then the colonists ceased communication maybe because Anson Guthrie wanted to suppress new ideas? No way, Jose, as Fenn realizes. Groups and individuals in the Solar System would have tried to re-establish contact but maybe small robotic craft detected and jammed their messages? But why? Indeed, would a global AI behave as Anderson suggests? Does it try to suppress humanity merely because his heroes need a villain to fight?

Meanwhile, Fenn has become a policeman and we read an Andersonian fight scene in which he acquires a personal villain.

What Terrans can do on Luna:

receive necessities and comforts from citizen's credit;

find meaning in a subculture, faith or lodge;

watch the multiceiver;

turn to petty crime.

But what crimes are there to commit? We are used to reading about petty crimes in impoverished urban areas but, in this case, no one is impoverished. We would benefit from a few more details in this part of the narrative.

I think that determined groups would be able to pool and invest their citizen's credits in new activities and to lobby the Synesis to lift any restrictions on such activities. The human race will still include those who refuse to be smothered, demotivated etc.