More commentaries on humanity from an alien viewpoint: Voah can scarcely translate "officials," "busybodies," "journalists" or "celebrity" so he borrows old and foreign words as approximate equivalents.
Officials
Arvelans respect parents, elders and Speakers for Alliances but officials are none of these. They are merely agents of an organization that claims the right to kill anyone who opposes it, a "government."
Busybodies
People who impose themselves on others without any kinship, custom or need.
Journalists
They collect and disseminate information, restrained only by "government."
Celebrity
Earthfolk can admire, respect and even love people whom they have never met and who are not kin! (How odd.)
(It does all sound strange, doesn't it?)
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would add however, that "officials" did sometimes take on parental/kinship roles in human history. In the Confucian ethos of Imperial China conscientious officials could be regarded as the father of the people they governed.
And we certainly see a lot about "celebrities" in the UK and the US! And SF fans also have celebrities, such as their favorite science fiction writers.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Because of the discussions in this blog I've reread THE LONG WAY HOME, QUESTION AND ANSWER, and WORLD WITHOUT STARS. So you are getting some people to read Anderson's works!
I still remember how the ending of WORLD WITHOUT STARS surprised, even shocked me, the first time I read that story decades ago. Felip Argens tracked down Hugh Valland to the coastal Maine village where the latter had a house. And, at the cemetery found the grave of Hugh's beloved, Mary O'Meara, born 2018 and died in 2037. A young woman deceased for 3000 years!
We can fancifully assume Mary O'Meara is "now" six years old (with Hugh approximately the same age). But I certainly don't believe there are real world lines of scientific/medical research leading to the "immortalizing" antithanatic that was becoming practical at the time Mary O'Meara died. Possibly because of an accident during that visit to the High Sierra mentioned by Valland?
I feel the need for a change of pace after thus rereading three of Anderson's novels. So I'm rereading THE LAYS OF BELERIAND, by JRR Tolkien (ed. by Christopher Tolkien), Vol. 3 of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE EARTH, a series in which Tolkien's son pub. many of his father's unpublished/fragmentary works, with commentaries.
I might also soon reread THE ENEMY STARS, "The Ways of Love," and "The Bitter Bread."
Ad astra! Sean
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