Futuristic sf comments on the time in which it is written. What will our descendants think about us? Some of those descendants argue that:
"...to postulate world-wrecking energies in human hands was baseless sensationalism." (p. 143)
But there are still large craters to be accounted for.
"...perhaps meteorites were responsible... Since Wickliss Balaloch first proved that shooting stars are stones from outer space, many had been identified, several very large. A rain of heavy masses could well have brought down the global society, leaving a remnant of ignorant peasants and savages to start over." (ibid.)
(SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers - except that there there is more than just an ignorant remnant!)
Josserek is excited to live in a time when knowledge is increasing although it is unfortunate that knowledge has had to be lost.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That intrigues me, Anderson showing us how people in the far future, struggling to rebuild during an Ice Age, might speculate about their past.
Ad astra! Sean
Knowledge tends to be preserved if a) it's useful, or b) people have enough leisure to cultivate it for its own sake.
Eg., after the fall of Rome, the art of building Roman roads was lost. That required a government covering a very, very large area to be worthwhile.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Were lucky that, during the first five or six centuries after the Western Empire fell, Christian monks working as copyists preserved as much as they did of Classical literature.
Ad astra! Sean
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