Gaia does not want her recently recreated human race to encounter her too soon.
"'What do you fear in this?'
"'Chaos. The unforeseeable, the uncontrollable.'" (p. 242)
Chaos has become a familiar but also ambiguous theme in Poul Anderson's works:
Law fights Chaos;
the Time Patrol counteracts temporal chaos;
social controllers resist chaotic freedom;
harmonious AIs oppose chaotic humanity.
How do we assess Gaia? She deceives Wayfarer and tries to destroy Brannock but champions humanity.
Chaos is also a morally neutral scientific datum, e.g.:
"Chaos and quantum uncertainties made developments incalculable in principle."
-PART TWO, V, p. 146.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I also remembered how Wayfarer raise an interesting ethical point to Gaia: if the human race CHOSE to become extinct, by what right did Gaia contravene that choice to bring mankind back from extinction? I don't agree extinction was a right choice, but the issue raised by Wayfarer interested me.
Ad astra! Sean
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