The Stars Also

 

In Genesis 1:16, God makes the Sun and the Moon and:

"...he made the stars also."

In Genesis by Poul Anderson, PART ONE ends:

"Consciousness spread ever more widely among the stars. Self-evolved, it gained even greater heights.

"The stars were also evolving." 

-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, IX, p. 97.

I think that Anderson's phrase about the stars "also evolving" echoes, just as it also contrasts with, the Biblical phrase about the stars being made also.

Each member of the galactic brain is a complex of organisms operating mostly on the quantum level and their machines. These "nodes" drift through the spiral arms, the halo and the Magellanic Clouds and some have reached the Andromeda galaxy. Clearly, nodes are immune to the cosmic rays which are lethal to protoplasmic organisms and which therefore are a barrier to interstellar travel by such organisms. Has Anderson imagined a possible future for intelligence?

To respond to obstacles to interstellar travel, we have appealed to Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains and to his Genesis.