Sunday 2 July 2017

"Requiem For A Universe"

Poul Anderson sketches a future society effectively in the opening pages of this story. For reference, see here.

The narrator has spent a year helping with the construction of a Galactic Analyzer fifty astronomical units away from Earth;

he and his wife are holidaying in a primitive cottage on Kauai where they can be alone with sea, sand, flowers, sun and rainbows;

their phone, visual as well as auditory, can be set to respond only to important messages;

the narrator is a "linker" and his friend, David Rhys, is a "holothete";

both somehow interact with computers;

the narrator's wife is a school teacher;

most children are taught by computers although gifted children of well-off parents can instead have human teachers;

there is an Institute of Holothetes and also a Peace Command (the latter sounds familiar from other Anderson futures);

the Peace Command lends the Institute a sub-orbital rocket to take the narrator to France where his friend is catatonic.

A future full of information technology has been outlined and a human drama is about to begin.

See also here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I myself have been to Kauai. My older brother used to own a house there many years ago. And I do agree on how John Henry and his wife could "be alone with sea, sand, flowers, sun and rainbows." Every time I went to Hawaii I saw lots of rainbows!

Sean