There are very few future historical "facts" in this story but let us gather together any that we can find:
the colonized planet has been named neither New Earth nor Terra Nova but New Terra;
it is in the Tau Cetian system;
the voyage from Earth took forty years;
those who left Earth were among the poor and disinherited and were prepared to die in the ship so that their children could live in a new world;
the colonists have exterminated the natives;
the viewpoint character, Rugi, is the very last native and the concluding paragraph of the story is set immediately after his death;
Rugi's people had had a great non-technical civilization and had built the Temple of Otheii;
however, Rugi, orphaned in childhood, has inherited none of his people's culture and has to ask a human being what the Temple is.
2 comments:
When the weak become the strong, they act like the strong...
Kaor, Paul!
Fortunately, as time passed, Anderson coined better names for his fictional planets than something as hackneyed as "New Terra."
Desperate people will be esp. prone to being ruthless and cruel.
Ad astra! Sean
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