"The hill seemed strangely unreal, after all that he had seen from it, the whole enormous tomorrow of the cosmos. He would never quite fit into the little round of days that lay ahead." (p. 288)
This passage closely echoes the conclusion of Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker where the narrator, having mentally traveled through the history of this cosmos and of other creations, returns home and surveys the Earth of his time, the late 1930s - as we know, a momentous period.
I need only add that Poul Anderson's cosmological sf surpasses Stapledon's:
electromagnetic communication between post-organic intelligences spreading through and beyond this galaxy is more credible than "telepathic" communication between multiple organic species in different galaxies;
a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum is a more scientific cosmic origin than a post-Biblical, experimenting "Star Maker."
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Having read only "Odd John" and "Sirius," of Stapledon's works, I can't really say Anderson's TAU ZERO, GENESIS, or STAR FARERS surpasses the former writer's cosmological SF. But I will say PA's works IMPRESSES me hugely.
Your comment about telepathy reminded me of Anderson's Maurai story "Progress," where we see a kind of artificial telepathy from miniaturized radios surgically implanted into the minds of Maurai intelligence agents. That too is more plausible than Stapledon having different races in different galaxies communicating via telepathy.
Ad astra! Sean
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