I am having my mind thrillingly boggled by my ace book. There are worlds out there a bit like Pluto and Europa which have got liquid oceans underneath a kilometres-thick ice crust. They might be capable of supporting life and my book imagines sentient life evolving there, in the dark cold waters, never dreaming that there might be more because they won’t ever penetrate the ice and see the universe. Horrible and astonishing thought. Imagine eyeless underwater dark wriggling intelligent things never ever knowing they live on a tiny planet in an infinity of space. I have been sitting here shuddering and enthralled. This is the space book, not Anne Boleyn’s letters. I am looking forward to them too but I already know what happens in the end.
LATER NOTE: Of course if they were eyeless they probably wouldn’t ever see the infinite universe anyway. Also on reflection it is unfair to consider them weird. One wonders what they might make of the species that invented libraries.
