"'All right, Dad.'" (p. 90)
-which reads like a prologue. However, this story of only five pages was originally published as a one-off in Boys' Life and has sufficiently conveyed its central notion of an individual trained to tune in to his total environment.
"In The Shadow" ends when a spaceship crew has agreed not to return to Earth, currently ruled by a dictatorial Gearch, but instead to remain in the outer Solar System, there to spend years communicating with the inhabitants of a newly detected shadow planet. We might expect to learn some of what they learn from this interplanetary, even inter-universal, communication. Instead, the story ends when its viewpoint character articulates his reason for staying where he is:
"'Freedom. I'm my own man now.'" (p. 111)
1 comment:
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
"The Faun" is very much the kind of story showing us the kinds of ideals which was once the ethos, the driving force, of the Boys and Girls Scouts of America.
"In The Shadow" was one of those stories by Anderson which gave me some difficulties. COULD our "plane of existence" actually come into contact with an alternate or parallel universe as described in the story? Fascinating, even revolutionary, if we could!
And the lady with that POV character did not agree with him. She longed to marry him and have children, and settle down. For that kind of freedom, he might have to pay a heavy price.
Ad astra! Sean
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