I said here that Earth had gone incommunicado but perhaps that was a slight exaggeration. We are definitely told first that there are no longer any spaceships from Earth and secondly that:
"Earth has long ago sunk into alien concerns." (p. 173)
Irony: Earth becomes the alien planet. That could be compatible with "alien" laser messages still being received from Earth - although no one would have much incentive to respond? Indeed, how is it known that Earth has gone alien? When reading this passage, are we addressed by the omniscient narrator, who would know exactly what is happening on Earth, or by an inhabitant of an extra-solar planet who would need to have some source of information for his comments?
Are the alien concerns the mysticism that we knew was spreading on Earth or are they a literally alien influence from another intelligent species that has been encountered? So much speculation is possible on the basis of a single word in Anderson's text.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Assuming Earth has not collapsed into a Dark Age, a simpler understanding of the word "alien" is possible. The concerns and interests of people on Earth has become so strange that they seemed "alien" to the people on the colonies, with their inevitably very different POVs.
Sean
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