Star Dance Evolution

2014 and I finally got round to reading it:
        Nebula Winners Thirteen
        Edited by Samuel Delany
Published in 1978, when I was 18 years old.
The same age Delany was when he wrote Babel-17,
A ground breaking book in its own right.

Rereading Stardance.
I know I read it years ago, in a Spider Robinson Anthology.
I remember not one word of it from the first time.
I almost skipped reading it.
Thinking I'd remembered a simple short story
Of a zero gravity duet that I didn't want to revisit.

That's not what it was at all.
Now in my 50's I have life experience
That lights up the humane connection of the characters:
Artists gone cynic and back again.

In recent years, I'd all but given up reading SF.

Asimov, my childhood favorite, had gone formula on me
And was no longer palletable.

Pratchett was pretty much the only recreational reading I could stand.

Everything else was either too much work.
Or uninteresting.
Or worst of all, a broken dream.

Elon Musk and Geoffry Bezos dare to dream.
I'd given up.

But with Stardance, maybe I'll come back from
Dreams abandoned to reality of School, Job, and
Worst of all, bad science, and stupid politics.

Dreams dispelled by feelings of
Mortality and limitation.

Spider and Jane Robinson:
    Your Charlie Armisted reminded me of the richness of who I am.

When I felt like making the effort to read,
I'd pick up Clarke or Bradbury
Or best of all, Delaney
Samuel you've written so much, yet not near enough.
I stopped reading Neveryon because I didn't want it to come to an end.

Here it is 2019
And I've forgotten Stardance all again.

But maybe I've not forgotten to dream.

With my husband and my home and my singing
I'm living the dream.

It's time to dream bigger.

I think I'll pick Neveryon back up from book one.

I own a bunch of Dune
But who has time for Fictional Jihad Allegory
When there's a real one going on at home?

It's time to use my poet's sense
To bring good science and good policy
Into the hearts, hands, and minds
Of those mislead by demagogues!

Perhaps I'm evolved enough
To read some Ursula K. Leguin.
I hear she was a really subtle and powerful subversive
In her time.


	5 July 2014 revised 22 August 2019 (unfinished)
	by Bill Cattey