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Being Ballard, it’s an allegorical tale, yes, but not for anything so bland as mortality. The last line, about worshipping the station, is the reveal. Ballard
by madaxe_again 6y ago
Being Ballard, it’s an allegorical tale, yes, but not for anything so bland as mortality.
The last line, about worshipping the station, is the reveal. Ballard saw within man a tendency to underestimate the depth of the problems he tackled, and a tendency to end up absolutely enmired within false premises, within artifice - these themes are endemic to many of his dystopias.
My best guess is that this is a parable on exactly those themes.
- kaetemi 6y agoI guess it's about the bias towards one's own world view. (And eventually the worship of beliefs, which are mere constructs of our limited knowledge.) The space travelers travel from transit station to transit station. What do they assume when they stumble upon an uninhabited Earth? It's a transit station. It's not only the bias of the space traveler, but also that of the reader who assumes that the space traveler is familiar with the concept of people living on planets, and therefore since the traveler did not conclude that this was an uninhabited planet, the reader already assumes it cannot be Earth.
- twic 6y agoI think Ballard's thing is not about people's tendency to underestimate the weirdness of the universe, but about the universe being far weirder than we think. Which is very close to being a distinction without a difference, i know. But i think it's rare that Ballard frames this as a flaw in people; rather, it's a terrifying fact about the universe.