"Maybe Earth lay as empty, Jong thought, not for the first time." (pp. 219-220)
An sf writer must imagine not only what space explorers find when they are out there but also what they find when they return to Earth especially if they have been gone for a long time like twenty thousand years in this case. Of course, the author is free to imagine anything both times. I very faintly remember that Dan Dare once returned from an interstellar expedition to find Earth deserted because there had been an evacuation but why or where to I have no idea. A coded message received from March 12, 3022, in James Blish's The Quincunx Of Time seems to be a routing order during a mass evacuation (but it cannot be the same evacuation!) Sf stories remind us of each other. People ask, "Wasn't there a Star Trek like this?" Each of us has a unique set of memories so what does "empty Earth" connote for anyone else?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Earth could be as empty of human as we see it become in "The Chapter Ends." Or as catastrophically empty of human life as seen in Anderson's "In Memoriam." Or as empty of all life after Earth was destroyed in AFTER DOOMSDAY. These are some of the connotations I thought of.
Ad astra! Sean
Three empty earths in Anderson.
Earths.
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