Monday, 23 January 2023

Space And Nature

"...space was the great Enemy against which all souls aboard, all mankind had to unite..."

In the following story, a Planetary Engineer thinks of himself as:

"...a soldier in man's finest war, the fight of all men against a blind and indifferent nature which had brought their kind forth without caring."
-Poul Anderson, "The Snows of Ganymede" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 141-214 AT I, p. 142.

We have two enemies. The other is within and is addressed in "Un-Man" and "The Sensitive Man."

A Nazi and a Zionist, stranded on the surface of Ganymede, would have to cooperate to survive. Far enough away, Terrestrial divisions become invisible. The common enemy is space and nature.
at

1 comment:

  1. Sean M. Brooks24 January 2023 at 08:01

    Kaor, Paul!

    I hesitate at PERSONALIZING "nature" like that. The universe is neither hostile or blind, it simply exists. Our job is simply to cope with it, as best we can.

    A piquant thought, a Nazi and Zionist, stranded on Ganymede and forced to cooperate for survival--despite mutual detestation!

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete