The lesson I draw from this story is that in it, the human race went to the stars too soon. If they had thought more about situations like this before they started travelling the starlines, they’d have a prior consensus about what to do.
Fiction like this may be the nearest thing to a way to avoid such a blunder. Occasionally a pundit says “Nobody has ever given any thought to the consequences of biotechnology,” as if sf didn’t exist, so I’m not hopeful.
The lesson I draw from this story is that in it, the human race went to the stars too soon. If they had thought more about situations like this before they started travelling the starlines, they’d have a prior consensus about what to do.
Fiction like this may be the nearest thing to a way to avoid such a blunder. Occasionally a pundit says “Nobody has ever given any thought to the consequences of biotechnology,” as if sf didn’t exist, so I’m not hopeful.