Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
View source
# 2019-02-18 - The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke
Illustration
A hard science fiction story about an atheist, Utopian human colony
in the far future that is visited by travelers from a doomed Earth,
as the Sun has gone nova. I enjoyed the idyllic, peaceful tone of
the story.
Another review notes that this book deals with the question of
whether humanity can thrive without the existence of challenge. Our
history has been the story of struggle against the elements, the
wild, and each other. Would we stagnate if aggression and strife
were bred out of the species?
# Intro
The total failure to find any trace of life in this Solar System, or
to pick up any of the interstellar radio signals that our great
antennas should be easily able to detect, has prompted some
scientists to argue "Perhaps we ARE alone in the Universe..."
Meanwhile, the controversy rages; as has been well said, EITHER
answer will be awe inspiring. The question can only be settled by
evidence, not by any amount of logic, however plausible. I would
like to see the whole debate given a decade or two of benign neglect,
while the radio-astronomers, like gold miners panning for dust,
quietly sieve through the torrents of noise pouring down from the sky.
"And the third, of course, was the seeding of the nearby stars in the
hope that the human race would not perish with the dying of its Sun."
[A human centric view.]
# Chapter 17. Chain of Command
"You can thank Earth for that. You gave us a Jefferson Mark Three
Constitution--someone once called it utopia in two megabytes--and
it's worked amazingly well. The program hasn't been modified for
three hundred years. We're still only on the Sixth Amendment."
# Chapter 21. Academy
"Hence it followed that all life forms were worthy of respect and
should be cherished. Some argued that even virulent pathogens and
disease vectors should not be exterminated under strict safeguards.
"Reverence for Life" became a very popular phrase during the Last
Days--and few applied it exclusively to human life."
"The concept of 'Metalaw'--I'm sure you've all heard the term--became
very popular. Was it possible to develop legal and moral codes
applicable to all intelligent creatures, and not merely to the
bipedal, air-breathing mammals who had briefly dominated Planet
Earth?"
[A more than human centric view.]
# Chapter 51. Relic
"It was given to me by some old and dear friends on my very last
night on Earth. 'All things are impermanent,' they reminded me.
'But we have guarded this for more than four thousand years. Take it
with you to the stars, with our blessings.'"
"It's all that's left of one of the greatest men who ever lived; he
founded the only faith that never became stained with blood. I'm
sure he would have been most amused to know that, forty centuries
after his death, one of his teeth would be carried to the stars."
[This is a reference to Gautama Buddha.]
# Chapter 54. Valediction
"Once I teased her by saying that fidelity was almost as strange to
the Lassans as jealousy; she retorted that they had gained by losing
both."
[The Lassan colony also embraced polyamory.]
author: Clarke, Arthur C. (Arthur Charles), 1917-2008
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth
LOC: PR6005.L36 S66
tags: book,fiction,sci-fi
title: The Songs of Distant Earth
# Tags
book
fiction
sci-fi
You are viewing proxied material from tilde.pink. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.