"...voyages to Avalon and Cibola..."
-New America, p. 263.
I have no memory of reading about Cibola before but now can easily google it. The name, "Avalon," is very important in Anderson's Technic History.
In "Home," a brown-furred native Mithran resembles a long-armed, bird-headed kangaroo. Is this an acceptable account of an extraterrestrial? A human being who has grown up on Mithras does not have to think of them like that but that does not change the fact that we do. The name, "Mithras," is very important in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy. (When a planet is named after a god, e.g., Woden, we soon forget the original meaning.)
That interstellar travel might be terminated on the ground that an Earth with an ever-increasing population can no longer afford it makes "Home" sound very like the Rustum stories. These narratives belong together in a themed collection if not also in a linear series.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That idea, of an overpopulated Earth, was popular with SF writers from about 1950-1980. And was certainly worth looking at. But real history/life is showing we may well be facing a dangerous underpopulation crisis.
Ad astra! Sean
75% of the human race live in countries with sub-replacement fertility and African birth-rates are collapsing too -- by 2030, all of North Africa will be sub-replacement, and chunks of southern and eastern Africa too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that is absolutely not a good thing! I can't help but think what can only be called societal despair and sense of hopelessness is what is causing so many to turn away from the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. It also reminds me what I read in Edward P. Hughes' MASTERS OF THE FIST, where, for reasons not given, most males became sterile. These stories were set in a small Irish country village where a British army settled, as everything was falling apart. There it was discovered this soldier was one of the too rare men able to impregnate women. Unfair to say more!
I also wonder if it will be convinced religious believers, like orthodox Catholics and evangelical Protestants (plus Orthodox Jews) who end up having the most children--because they take seriously what their faith and the Scriptures teaches.
Another possible sign of hope might be the opening of a new frontier off Earth in space. The awareness of there still be important and real things to do and hope for might also encourage people to have children. Which is what we see on the planets colonized by Earth in the Rustum timeline.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: Last sentence of first paragraph of my second comment, "...where a British army sergeant..."
Sean
Post a Comment