"'...people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?'"
-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER TWO, p. 16.
Such an arrogant aristocrat would think that that anyone else's life was impoverished. Wardens have something in common with Exaltationists although the chief Ranger, Brann, physically resembles Merau Varagan. That phrase, "...in this age...," is a clue to Storm's origin.
Storm's norms:
we are built of clouds of energy;
our sun could consume Earth;
other suns could swallow ours;
our ancestors hunted mammoth, rowed across oceans and died in battle;
civilization is at the edge of oblivion;
our bodies fight hostile germs, entropy and time;
our ancestors knew that all that could be done was to meet the end of the world and of the gods bravely.
Science fiction reminds us of our real place in the universe.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
While I dislike Storm Darroway in some ways, she did make a legitimate point here. People DO tend to think the ways, mores, customs, etc., with which they grew up are the best or most preferable. We can find such an attitude as long ago, at least, as William Shakespeare's play JULIUS CAESAR.
Sean
Everyone thinks they're the pinnacle of human history. They're all wrong, but it's a natural mistake. We all also tend to think of time as more "compressed" the further away it is from ourselves. It's useful to put yourself in a different time mentally and then think backward and forward.
My grandfather fought in WW1. To him, Napoleon was approximately as far way temporally as he is from me. The 19th century was just as long as the 20th, and in some ways more historically central and unusual. In the core areas of Western civilization, 1812 was more different from 1912 than 1912 was from 2012.
Eg., in 1812 most of North America was "Indian Country", and there were 30 million buffalo. In 1912, the continental US was one English-speaking nation where you could travel from coast to coast (on land) by about 3-4 days. That sentence is equally true in the 21st century.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Again, I agree with your comments. The only caveat I would make being my belief some cultures and civilizations ARE better than others, past or present. NOT all cultures or ideas are equal. Note, I said ideas and cultures, NOT race (least of all piffles like skin color!).
Sean
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