"United, the two civilizations would linger no more in this handful of stars on a fringe of the galaxy; they would fare forth to possess the cosmos."
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, P. 435.
Magnusson does not think "spiral arm" but this is that same line of thought.
Explore the cosmos by all means but does anyone seriously think of conquering all of it? Billions of years hence, there will hopefully be intelligent beings but they will be so different from any currently existing organisms that it will not matter whether they are remote descendants of Terrans or of Merseians or are an entirely separate line of evolution. There is no knowing what their motivations will be and, even if they still entertained ideas of conquest, they would hardly be aiming at the entire cosmos. They would have to spread through it and would have to change themselves in the process so that whoever arrived in a remote cluster of galaxies would no longer be the original race.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with your skepticism about such fantasies as anyone trying to conquer the COSMOS! Whatever its faults, the Terran Empire was far wiser because it eschewed any such impossible ambitions.
Sean
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