Hugh Valland was nearly three thousand years old at the beginning of World Without Stars. He and his shipmates spent forty years on the intergalactic planet. Mary O'Meara was born in 2018 and Valland was about the same age, maybe a year's difference at most. So let us say that the concluding chapter is set about 5000 A.D., in round figures.
In Niyork, ivy and lichen grow up the tall, empty towers and the street traffic is light but there are good restaurants. Forest covers the northern part of the continent. On the coast of Maine, one particular town was:
"...alive with lumberjacks and whalers..." (XVII, p. 123)
- before men went west, then to the stars. Now it is a village of two hundred immortals living in peaked, shingled houses, beyond them sea and stars. Crickets chirp, dew glitters and sea murmurs.
"This was Manhome. No matter how far we range, the salt and the rhythm of her tides will always be in our blood." (p. 124)
A fitting observation near the end of a novel about extragalactic travel.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can't help but wonder if such a quiet, introverted life would turn out to be deadly boring to most people after a few centuries. That would explain why Earth's population was so low, due to most men and women leaving for other worlds.
Ad astra! Sean
So, Mary and Hugh would be tail-end Gen Z, eh?
Indeed.
.Kaor, To Both!
I would need to check my copy, but I think Mary's grave stone had her date of birth in 1998.
Ad astra! Sean
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