-Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire (New York, 1997), PROLOGUE, p. 9.
A "quivira" is a virtual reality apparatus.
The consistent message of Anderson's "Harvest of Stars" Tetralogy is that, in this future history, mankind is in a long term malaise and decline. Nevertheless, I like the idea of a peaceful Earth where a man can wander to and fro and find high technology from olden times.
Nicol, who wants to be a poet, refers to Homer and quotes Shakespeare, Kipling, Borges and Hopkins. This post is illustrated with lines from a dark sonnet by Hopkins. See here.
Tomorrow: Day trip to London.
Result: Little or no blogging.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
A peaceful Earth is fine, as long as it's HUMAN beings who are in charge, not the AIs! The malaise and decline you mentioned results from the slowly growing sense of frustration and ennui many people were feeling. Here we see Earth well on the way to the kind of grim situation seen in GENESIS where, in despair, the human race chose to die out rather than live on in useless, pointless, sybaritic idleness. Because the AI which became Gaia had stripped all real power from mankind.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Quoted from a melange of sources including Wikipedia:
The manga "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō is set in a peaceful, post-cataclysmic world where humankind is in decline after an environmental disaster. Exactly what happened is never explained, but sea levels have risen far enough to inundate coastal cities such as Yokohama, Mount Fuji erupted in living memory, and climate change has occurred. With the seasons being less pronounced, the winters are milder and the summer isn’t scorching anymore. The reduced human population has reverted to a simpler life, and the reader is told this is the twilight of the human age. Instead of raging against their fate, humans are quietly accepting.
"Hatsuseno Alpha is an android (“robot person”) who runs an out-of-the-way coffee shop, Café Alpha, on the lonely coast of the Miura Peninsula of Japan, while her human “owner” is on a trip of indefinite length. Though she spends much of her time alone, Alpha is cheerful, gregarious, and — unlike the slowly declining humans — immortal."
In response to Sean's comment, in YKK no one is particularly in charge. Everyone's just going about their lives, and little or no government is seen aside from a sort of neighborhood council (whose meetings seem scarcely more than an excuse for having a party). There's no violence; the one time a firearm is fired, Alpha is "plinking" at an abandoned road sign because she likes to see the green electric flash produced when her taser-bullets hit metal.
From the manga's last page, "It is the time when the whole world, which had been like a festival, slowly calmed down. Here is an introduction to the gentle time called the Age of the Calm Evening."
Alas, this manga isn't available in translated hard copy. Those of us who can't read Japanese have to look for unofficial online translations.
Kaor, DAVID!
Thanks for these interesting comments of yours about this manga you read. I can't say I would care for such a world where the human race is said to have gone so apathetic. Or even very plausible given that, "climate change" or no climate change, Earth still seems very HABITABLE. It's hard to think the warrior spirit which has driven so much of human history would so suddenly disappear.
I think Poul Anderson handled the themes of helpless powerlessness, despair, decline, and extinction more convincingly in GENESIS.
Sean
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