Friday 23 January 2015

Perspectives

Poul Anderson's Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, Chapters I and III, describe either Christian Brannock's experiences or Wayfarer's memories of them. Part Two, Chapter III, adds a second perspective.

As Wayfarer traverses the Oort Cloud to enter the Solar System, Kalava's Gray Courser traverses the Windroad Sea to reach "...an unknown land." (p. 123) Never before have space travel and sea travel been so creatively conjoined.

Gods, nodes of the galactic brain, can disagree. Gaia questions why Wayfarer has come physically. In fact, her communications have been evasive. Wayfarer "'...wonders[s] if Earth should be saved from solar expansion.'" (p. 127) Gaia replies that:

"'The knowledge to be won by observing the unhampered course of events is unpredictable, but it will be enormous...'" (ibid.)

Wayfarer believes that Earth is uninhabited whereas the reader has seen Kalava and his contemporaries apparently on the globally warming Earth. So what happens when gods disagree and why is there a prima facie contradiction as to whether Earth is inhabited?

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