Festivals

There are Birthdays of Mithras in The King Of Ys and Christmases in a Time Patrol story, a Technic History instalment and a chapter of A Boat Of A Million Years (XIX, 24). In real life, I have attended Christmas parties, of course, but also Solstice and Wesak (the Buddha's birthday). (In our group's calendar, Wesak is a week after May Day.) (Anderson's "Mayday Orbit.") My friend at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre is preparing a ceremony for Paranirvana (the Buddha's death). One Buddhist tradition celebrates his birth, enlightenment and death all one the same day. Sikhs celebrate the births and deaths of ten Gurus as well as Diwali inherited from Hindus. We all have our New Years. Where am I going with this? Festivals unite us. Human beings in different futures and different timelines celebrate the same or similar festivals as us.

The Boat Of A Million Years makes us wait for physical contact with the Others/Alloi. This is a book that has just about everything: fourteen historical periods; three decades of the twentieth century; the future Earth and Solar System; a long interstellar space journey; contact with another intelligent species. And its climax looks toward a further future.