"We Can Never Return Home"

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

"Napery rested snowy beneath a gleam of tableware." (p. 58)

I have read Starfarers twice before, the second time to blog about it as now. However, I do not remember noticing this to me odd word before. Anderson's texts bear close study. Sometimes the meaning of a word is clear from its context but not always and at other times a meaning guessed from the context is wrong.

We learn of another future denomination: Reform Catholic. In the Technic History, the Jerusalem Catholic Church could be the Roman Catholic Church with its headquarters moved (back) to Jerusalem but "Reform Catholics" must have made some break from Roman Catholicism. With this single phrase, Anderson informs us that the fictitious timeline contains entire congregations who are represented to us by just one of the characters.

"'We can never return home. When we come back to Earth [after ten thousand years], we will necessarily come as foreigners, immigrants.'" (p. 59)

That first sentence sounds familiar and is obviously intended to echo an established saying. We cannot return to the home that we remember because it and, more importantly, we have changed in our absence. Science fiction can show us a group of characters returning to the Solar System after ten thousand years...