This entry is going to sound whiny.
It occurs to me that all of you Earthlings (it's been politely suggested that I refrain from calling you Dirtsiders), you know how many you are, are living lives that have been basically unchanged since the days of your grandparents.
Oh, sure. There's been major political changes in China, Africa and India. Sea-levels are higher now than ever before. England has tornadoes, there's malaria in Vermont, and you've lost more species in every biome in the last fifty years than in the previous five hundred. Definitely your grandparents wouldn't recognize a lot of what you have that they didn't; VR, gene-hacks, cybersex. But economics have barely changed, the global economy is still based on money, and you still work to get paid to buy groceries to live.
If you're reading this, you may end up being an exception, but most of you have never and will never see a spacer in the flesh. VR doesn't count. There's billions of you and at last estimate (because we don't census well) there were about 3x105 of us out here, spread from Mercury to Saturn. Most of us don't like leaving the Big, but don't assume that just because Luna has gravity, it isn't in the Big. It is.
I know from my e-mail that a lot of you have olde tyme romantic notions about the Big, about spacers and space travel. And I know that VRs about the wars are way more popular than documentaries and that the VRs do it all wrong. It's probably a feedback loop; the producers give you what they think you want to see and you respond by wanting to see more of what they gave you. Human nature plus ratings equals...
But whatever you think happened during the two Thaiax wars is probably wrong. And most of you will go to your graves with the wrong movies playing back in your heads. I hope I can do a little something about that.
And I think I speak for every spacer, born and immigrant, when I tell you that no matter how efficient your apartment is at it, no matter what brand you use to do it, no matter how small a package your kitchen delivers to the municipality, you guys don't know nothin' about recycling.
Seriously. Now I truly believe that Distance is the single most important factor in defining human culture out in the Big. Sometimes though, when I think about being in a small, closed, artificial pseudo-ecosystem (read patrol-ship on picket duty), I almost want to change my mind. Especially when I just want a drink of water.
It occurs to me that all of you Earthlings (it's been politely suggested that I refrain from calling you Dirtsiders), you know how many you are, are living lives that have been basically unchanged since the days of your grandparents.
Oh, sure. There's been major political changes in China, Africa and India. Sea-levels are higher now than ever before. England has tornadoes, there's malaria in Vermont, and you've lost more species in every biome in the last fifty years than in the previous five hundred. Definitely your grandparents wouldn't recognize a lot of what you have that they didn't; VR, gene-hacks, cybersex. But economics have barely changed, the global economy is still based on money, and you still work to get paid to buy groceries to live.
If you're reading this, you may end up being an exception, but most of you have never and will never see a spacer in the flesh. VR doesn't count. There's billions of you and at last estimate (because we don't census well) there were about 3x105 of us out here, spread from Mercury to Saturn. Most of us don't like leaving the Big, but don't assume that just because Luna has gravity, it isn't in the Big. It is.
I know from my e-mail that a lot of you have olde tyme romantic notions about the Big, about spacers and space travel. And I know that VRs about the wars are way more popular than documentaries and that the VRs do it all wrong. It's probably a feedback loop; the producers give you what they think you want to see and you respond by wanting to see more of what they gave you. Human nature plus ratings equals...
But whatever you think happened during the two Thaiax wars is probably wrong. And most of you will go to your graves with the wrong movies playing back in your heads. I hope I can do a little something about that.
And I think I speak for every spacer, born and immigrant, when I tell you that no matter how efficient your apartment is at it, no matter what brand you use to do it, no matter how small a package your kitchen delivers to the municipality, you guys don't know nothin' about recycling.
Seriously. Now I truly believe that Distance is the single most important factor in defining human culture out in the Big. Sometimes though, when I think about being in a small, closed, artificial pseudo-ecosystem (read patrol-ship on picket duty), I almost want to change my mind. Especially when I just want a drink of water.
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