"'I offer not peace, but a sword,' he said." (p. 43)
Biblical and the first one that I have noticed so far.
In the 1960's, my attention was on the facts that these characters were in the future, on Venus, at the bottom of a sea, with wild animals and plants fighting on the continent above them. Now I realize that a lot of the texts is about interactions between the characters.
These "Immortals" do not live indefinitely but do remain youthful for several centuries. Kuttner shows us how this enables them to learn and to solve problems, sometimes just by waiting:
"This too, will pass." (p. 47)
Thus, we can compare this work with those by Heinlein, Anderson and Blish that we have previously discussed.
As ever in American sf, renewed interplanetary travel, to be followed by interstellar, is put forward as a future goal.
Ad astra and all that.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
As I recall, during the British Empire, there was a view among some administrators that the best way to handle some problems was by "muddling thru," outliving those problems.
And I hope that futuristic goal of interplanetary space travel becomes a reality within a few years, due to the work of SpaceX!
Ad astra! Sean
There's a Middle Eastern legend about a Persian king who asked his savants to come up with a saying that would be universally true in all times and places.
"This, too, shall pass," was what they came up with.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
There's also the story about a man condemned to death who made a bargain with a Persian king that if he was given one year to teach the king's favorite horse to sing he would be pardoned. Later, other prisoners laughed to see him singing to the horse. He replied that the might die during that year, the prisoner might die, or the horse could learn how to sing!
Ad astra! Sean
Speaking of horses singing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Heinrich%27s_Christmas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8IRHPIPgc
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