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: LOC: PR6005.L36 S66 tags: book,fiction,sci-fi title: The Songs of Distant Earth Tags ==== book fiction sci-fi