Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [492]

There was a long report on the radio today about the findings of the big Anglo-Japanese cosmological station on the moon. The station, with its vast array of telescopes and some of the most sensitive spectroscopic equipment ever made has detected more planets orbiting nearby stars. That station has been detecting new worlds for a dozen years now, and there’s even evidence that a few of the discovered worlds may be life-bearing. I’ve listened to and read every scrap of information I could find on this subject, and I’ve noticed that there’s less and less argument against the likelihood that some of these worlds are alive. The idea is gaining scientific acceptance. Of course, no one has any idea whether the extrasolar life is anything more than a few trillion microbes. People speculate about intelligent life, and it’s fun to think about, but no one is claiming to have found anyone to talk to out there. I don’t care. Life alone is enough. I find it…more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there. There are living worlds just a few light years away, and the United States is busy drawing back from even our nearby dead worlds, the moon and Mars. I understand why they are, but I wish they weren’t. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 492

Note

The journal-entry texture does real work here: bureaucratic specifics (agency name, instrument type, ‘a dozen years’) ground the wonder in the credible rhythms of a news bulletin, then the prose drops its own formality at exactly the right moment — ‘I don’t care. Life alone is enough.’ The repeated self-interruption (‘more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain’) performs a mind reaching past its own vocabulary. The closing clause locks the private awe against the public retrenchment without editorializing.