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Saturday, April 13, 2024

"Creation Myths of the Recently Extinct" by Frederik Pohl

http://www.philsp.com/visco/Magazines/ASF/ASF_0771.jpg

 First appeared in Stanley Schmidt's Analog in the Probability Zero section. James Frenkel considered it one of Pohl's best.

 

Summary:

Aliens see a planet they want to get rid of all life. How do they manage to do it.


Discussion:

Where the story goes is predictable. More for the completist reader of Frederik Pohl.

The title is fantastic but strange. Whose myth is it? The aliens'? The humans'? 

If humans, it's not a creation myth but a destruction one, but how would they write it? If aliens, it's not really a creation of the species. A creation of one particular planet, true, but that's not what we generally consider a creation myth--the start of everything, usually. There's also a problem of this not feeling anything like a myth.

Perhaps even our idea of a myth will change, but that seems hard to believe if the original myths remain.

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