The Apex Book of World SF

It is genuinely shocking to be jolted out of the world of our common culture into the world of our different worlds, and rituals around death and dying. He is no longer here as the ultimate medium or translator, the one who selected what mattered. There is only unalloyed culture, and no one to negotiate the treaties.

Don’t little children, awakened one morning and told, “Now you’re five!”—don’t they wail at the universe’s descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death—shouldn’t we all wail to the stars?

minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River