From Plato’s Cave to the Stars

As a philosophy major who remembers the prisoners in Plato’s cave–persons able to see reality only in the form of shadows on the cave wall in front of them–I found this short story very evocative.  For those who watched the movie the Matrix and ever after doubted the nature of reality, Julie Pascal’s The Storyteller raises similarly troubling questions, but in only fourteen sweet and terrifying pages.

It’s hard to review a short story, because one doesn’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say that the Matrix scenario is given a more credible rationale in this story than in the Matrix.

But enough of being mysterious.  Now that those of you who are spoiler-averse have gone off and given the story a read, let’s note some of the other themes packed into this little gem.  We have the ethical question of how a colony ship could travel the vast distances of interstellar space while the occupants preserve their original culture, memories, and even their very humanity?  Should we strive for the “singularity,” where we achieve the rapture of the nerds and upload our consciousness into machines?  What if the programming gets warped?  If we don’t go for the singularity, won’t we get warped anyways, living in the confined environment of a starship, even if it’s a massive worldship?  Heinlein thought so.

The Storyteller brings these questions to vivid life, while still offering a spark of hope.  I highly recommend it.

Happy New Year!

About the Book Page:  One of the pages on this blog is filled–not with space law titles–but science fiction that I’ve reviewed for a space law, economic, or policy issue. If you want to read the space law review that goes with a book in the Book Page, just search on the name.

The Book Page also contains my own science fiction stories and books, even when they have nothing to do with space law.  Most of my stories set in the Ground Based Universe do have at least one space lawyer in them, if not several.