prologue to the first edition of
uranian gleams

…Anonymous letter of thanks beamed from the Terran Literary Guild to the Vyanthan Bards, 31^st August 3604:

May I add my own insignificant voice to the countless messages of congratulation which must be raining down through the barrier between us and your world.

Your gift, and the promise it brings of an unending stream of further delights, have at last begun to slake that millennial thirst which we Terrans have suffered ever since the so-called “end of history” in our Year 2330.

Of course, history never really ends while people remain alive. But the Discontinuity of 2330 – the dissemination of the Replicator all over the Earth – the abrupt and complete end of all the old economic struggles for survival – meant that the word “economy” thenceforth had to be redefined with a purely psychological or spiritual meaning. You of Ooranye, experienced though you are in almost every type of adventure, have never had to face that one! So perhaps you could spare a thought for what it has been like for us, ever since that day in 2330 when the practical pressures disappeared, and Terrans were left without needs, except the crying need for purpose in life.

But what’s the point of trying to explain? I don’t suppose you Uranians have ever felt a lack of purpose or structure or meaning. Your challenges are so much more external than ours, that we can’t reasonably expect you to imagine what it’s like for us. If I were to tell you that our adventures arise from our shortcomings alone, you’d most likely shrug in contempt. The fact is, in order to make our case to you, we’d have to translate certain terms which your world never needs, and our knowledge of your languages lags far behind your knowledge of ours.

That reminds me: pay no heed to any carping historians or geographers who aren’t comfortable with the way you render some of the notions in your stories. You’ve done well to tailor them to what we can comprehend. That’s the way to do it. Don’t overstrain the reader. Over-simplify if necessary – we all do it, quite rightly if the alternative is total failure of communication! Long may you continue in this vein…. We want more than Gleams!

Reply from the Vyanthan Bard, Day 11,014,471 Actinium Era:

…some day in the centuries to come the barrier you mention will be no more, and our two peoples will meet face to face. Reality looks forward; destinies have greater weight than causes.

And finally: why do I call the following batch of six stories the Gleams? Because our history is so long, 1,200,000 of your years, all I can offer in this first volume is a few shafts of light, a half-dozen gleams to illumine tiny fractions of the vast canvas. Of course many, many more stories are in the queue to come, and each will shine another ray. But these first six little views will always be the Gleams…

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