Paradises Lost
Ursula K. Le Guin
â â â â â
An intricate novella about the middle generations of a multi-generational spaceship, those with no memory of Earth and no chance of setting foot on the target planet. A few generations back, a religion started with the belief that nothing outside the ship matters, but you have to keep the ship functional and traveling. By now itâs become the belief that nothing outside the ship exists at all, that the home they left was a myth, and that their destination is a myth too, and only the journey is real.
What happens when that ideology takes hold of the shipâs leadership? And navigation? And education? After all, why teach children about animals, or forests, or how to farm on a planet? Theyâll never see one.
And what happens when that ideology faces proof that the destination is real?
On one hand, itâs a classic case of dogma vs. science, or humanityâs insistence on ignoring slow, long-term crises like climate change. On the other hand, itâs not as if thereâs a way for most people on the ship to prove the existence of planets anymore. They just have to take the word of their ancestors that their world existed. The destination world is as unknowable as an afterlife.
So it becomes a matter of trust: do you believe the religious teachings that match your experience, or do you believe the historical and scientific teachings that donât? And if you do have the knowledge and resources to check scientifically, do you accept or reject what you find out?
âParadises Lostâ was originally published in The Birthday of the World (And Other Stories), and is also collected in The Found and the Lost.
Echoes
There are a zillion stories about generation ships. But I see echoes of the story in Czernedaâs The Gate to Futures Past, with the people trapped on a space ship and facing the question of whatâs real about their existenceâŠin Burkeâs Semiosis, where the later generations of colonists have a completely different outlook from the first generation who came from EarthâŠand in Heavenâs Vault, a game in which an archaeologist seeks out the history of the nebula she lives in, even though the learned believe time is a loop, and the idea of coming from somewhere is unfathomable to them.
And of course we see that question of competing worldviews in the real world, as science and technology become too complex for casual understanding and pundits peddle âalternative factsâ while discouraging people from checking up on them.
