"'...for us too the hour of the Hunter shall come.'"
-SM Stirling, A Meeing At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter Three, p. 79.
That sounds remarkably like the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization.
The Wiccan continues:
"'Guide them flying on winds of golden light to the Summerlands. Mother-of-All, let them be reborn through you.'" (ibid.)
I cannot buy this. All life is local temporary negative entropy. The entropy of the matter that was organized into geese has just returned to the positive. More matter will become geese but none of those newly hatched geese will be these individual geese reborn. An invocation to acknowledge the death of the geese is appropriate but not a fantasy about their continued existence.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The bit about "the hour of the Hunter" does make me wonder if here Stirling was giving us another allusion to Anderson. An idea which pleases me!
Like you, I don't believe geese or other animals will be reincarnated again as geese, etc. In short, I don't believe animals have rational, immortal souls. I know we do disagree about things like human souls surviving death! (Smiles)
Sean
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