John Varley

About a week ago I read a science-fiction story In Fading Suns and Dying Moons written by John Varley. And after that the story has popped up my mind every now and then. According to it the meaning of life, of our existence is butterflies. Sometime ago, actually billions of years ago creatures or something from a more than four dimensional universe far beyond our human understanding came here and stirred the area of our Solar system - seeded it with something. So the Sun and planets came to be - and life... Billions of years went by and they came back to gather all the butterflies on planet Earth. (And something else from other planets of our Solar system...) The world of the story is quite like where we live right now. People try to destroy the harvesting creatures to no avail. They try to communicate with creatures of umphteenth dimension. Aliens say that the butterflies are so beautiful... After they've gathered all those little winged things aliens disappear. The Moon starts to fade and the Sun turns ashen... It begins to get cold...

John Varley's In Fading Suns and Dying Moons reminds me of an older story written by Arthur C. Clarke in which some scientists count all the stars in the Universe... And according to a Buddhist belief when all the stars have been counted the world will end. (At least that's how I remember the earlier story.)

Today Sini and I picked blueberries - actually we biked twice to a local forest and got possibly all we need for the coming Winter.

Somehow I didn't have much time for the Music - only played three, four hours flute...

Juha H.