Tuesday, 2 November 2021

Elbow Room In Two Timelines

"'I've read Falkayn's writings. He and his followers wanted not one thing except unmolested elbow room.'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT VI, p. 501.
 
"'That's our goal, isn't it?' he said. 'What the travel and labor are for. Homes, elbow room, personal gain, yeah, but way down the pike, the object of the game is to make the universe come alive.'
"Unspoken: - with our kind of life."
-The Fleet Of Stars, 1, p. 12.
 
Thus speak a descendant of David Falkayn on Avalon in the Technic History and a reincarnation of Anson Guthrie on Amaterasu in the Harvest Of Stars History. However, they live in different kinds of universes. Life is abundant in the first but rare in the second.
 
Guthrie hopes that his download will return from Sol a century hence and will then be reborn to marry yet another reincarnation of Demeter Daughter. Does reincarnation renew personal relationships so that couples will always remarry? 

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And those are worthy goals as outlined by Falkayn and the download of Guthrie. And we might see a small start in that direction if Elon Musk manages to found his Mars colony. That too would be a spreading of life off Earth, bringing life to Mars.

Putting aside, for the moment, my skepticism of such things being possible, I can see downloaded/reincarnated personalities preferring the same types of personalities as wives and husbands.

Ad astra! Sean