When Jorun has explained to Julith that artificially mutated brains enable Galactics like him to control cosmic forces and thus to "'...fly between stars...'" (p. 26) by an act of will alone, he has to add:
"'But your people don't have that brain, so we had to build space ships to take you away.'" (ibid.)
A technology that enables people who do not usually use spaceships to build a fleet of faster than light ships for a single evacuation job across thousands of light years! Although we read this sentence casually, its implications are anything but casual. What else is achieved by the great multi-species civilization at the Galactic Centre? We always feel that we are reading only a very small part of a much vaster story that can never be completed.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And that mention in "Chapter" of "obsolete" FTL tech again reminded me of why I don't believe that story to belong with the Psychotechnic series. Not when I recall how FTL was known/used long before then in stories like VIRGIN PLANET. Because people with FTL would have no incentive for something like these implausible mental powers. Not when it would need thousands of years of genetic engineering and risky tinkering with human lives to achieve.
Anderson soon moved away from such transhumanist delusions.
Ad astra! Sean
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