Poul Anderson devotes six pages to what Trevelyan learns about the slain race from their architecture, art, pictorial record and decayed technology. They had not used automobiles, had avoided pollution and had clearly thought ahead about such problems. It pays to reread these pages carefully. Trevelyan and the readers want to know what it had been like to be those people but the whole point of the story is that this entire race is not discovered until it is extinct so its legacy must be preserved:
"We guard the great Pact, which is the heart of civilization, of society, and ultimately of life itself: the unspoken Pact between the living, the dead, and the unborn, that to the best of our poor mortal abilities they shall all be kept one in the oneness of time. Without it, nothing would have meaning and it may be that nothing would survive. But the young generations so often do not understand." (p. 251)
In another Andersonian universe, Time Patrollers have an even closer experience of the oneness of time.
Sheila is at choir and I am about to go to Zen. Next week, Monday to Friday, we will be in a hotel in Wales and I will be without my laptop.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I still have sympathy for the aspirations/hopes of Murdoch Juan. After discovering Good Luck he should have tried obtaining a patent from the Stellar Union allowing him to settle parts of the planet as and when they became available after scholarly study.
Ad astra! Sean
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