This week we review The Domes of Calrathia by Isaac Young.
Sirius is an “astronomer,” but he's more like a monk. They might have once been Starship pilots, but now they've forgotten how. They have firearms on racks, but nobody knows how to use them anymore, and if there's fighting to be done, it's all with swords.
Sirius takes the blame for a crime he didn’t commit and his order sentences him to carry the last written history of the astronomers far, far away across a frozen ocean. He's not expected to survive this quest.
On the way, Sirius navigates a decadent civilization, a good man in a bad world. He picks his course, and he sticks to it. If there's a wall, he beats himself against it. If you're a saint, maybe God arranges it so that the wall breaks.
Is this an optimistic book? The fact that we're on a far planet at the tail end of a dying galactic empire means that there was once a galactic empire. That’s a certain amount optimism. How many people believe there's going to be a galactic Empire anymore? Elon Musk and Isaac Young. The wheel turns, and now we have a generation that is capable of believing such things again.
Mentioned in this episode: The Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe, 1980–83), A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr., 1959), Strauss–Howe generational theory, and Postcards John Carter’s review, which sent us here in the first place.
Join us next time for King of Dogs by Andy Edwards.
