the galaxy is overhead;
the blurb is factually accurate;
the spaceship has crashed in a lake;
the number of men escaping from the ship is correct;
Hugh Valland holds his omnisonor;
his spacesuit reflects the light of a red dwarf sun.
I have a copy of the "First Book Publication," which has this cover. The only anomaly here is a strange object on the left which is not on my copy.
Hugh Valland's fiancee lived from 2018 to 2037 and he is nearly three thousand so the novel is set around 5000, long after what would have been the period of the Terran Empire if we want to compare chronologies.
Do I seem to go off at tangents? Yes, I seem to go off at tangents. But anything that has been interrupted will be returned to. I enjoy the total freedom of blogging not by committee but by individual whim. Posting about SF Premises led to rereading passages of Poul Anderson's World Without Stars.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember how attracted I was by the cover of this edition of WORLD WITHOUT STARS that I was tempted to buy a copy--despite not needing to since I have a more than satisfactory copy of the text in hardcover.
I can see advanced medical science EXTENDING human lifespans but I doubt it will ever be possible to do that INDEFINITELY. Antisenescence of the kind seen in the Technic Civilization stories, yes, but not an antithanatic of the sort seen in WORLD WITHOUT STARS.
Sean
"I can see advanced medical science EXTENDING human lifespans but I doubt it will ever be possible to do that INDEFINITELY."
Why not?
If damage can be repaired, why could it not be repaired indefinitely?
I see two problems with indefinitely long lifespan.
1) Finite memory capacity of the human brain.
2) Sooner or later some accident will do too much damage at once for the body to be repaired.
#1 is mentioned with mitigating techniques mentioned in "World without Stars"
#2 is inherent in the workings of the universe. Even if #1 were solved #2 would result in a sort of half-life for any cohort of births, with the number surviving X years decreasing steadily in a roughly exponential way.
Kaor, Jim!
Theoretically, I can't object to what you suggested. I simply boggle at the idea of, say, living one hundred thousand years!
I agree with your two points.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment