Homecoming

It’s been a long while since my last post – got side tracked by reading comics. I guess I stopped reading books for almost a year but I had a couple of long trips last February and March. I couldn’t possibly lug my comics around so I picked up. I have had Orson’s Scott Cards Homecoming series for a couple of years now. I thought the five volumes would keep me company waiting in airports and coping with jetlag.

Whew. Human nature is scary. Card is very good in highlighting what is good in people but I think he deeply believes in the human capacity to hate. His saga told of what happened to a human colony in another planet after 40 million years and to the mega computer built to ensure that humanity survives. The assumption is that humans – without intervention – will kill each other off eventually. The computer ensured (through mind control – humans were genetically bred to be psychically sensitive to the suggestions of the computer) that humans would not develop technology that would facilitate mass transport and projectiles because these would lead towards mass destruction. If there were no means to transport an army and if they only had arrows and swords, wars would be localized - mankind would survive.

To support this theory, his story focused much on the relationship of half-brothers. Of how Elemak the first born hated his younger brother Nefai who was chosen by the mega computer (the Oversoul) to lead the expedition that would take them back to Earth (which after 40 million years have had time to recover from man made destruction). Elemaks’s hate was overpowering (it made me hate him too) that when they did get to Earth it caused centuries of war between their descendants.

The end of the series was hopeful – non-discrimination and respect for others different from you – were upheld but what stuck with me was that someone could rationalize hatred and convince others to hate to.

Maybe we are doomed.