"Ben Bova - The Kinsman Saga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

woman he has loved all his life is told properly for the first
time. Because the two novels were originally written the way
they were, many detailsЧand some larger aspectsЧof the
story did not blend smoothly, one book to the other. Now
they have been reexamined, rethought, and rewritten. All the
characters and themes now mesh properly, and you can read
the story of Kinsman's life from beginning to end as a single
seamless garment.

The social and political implications of building a defense

vi ii

against nuclear attack, however, remain almost exactly as I
originally wrote them. That is because they have not changed.
The ultimate result of space-based defenses against nuclear
attack will be a unified world government. There is absolutely
no doubt in my mind about that. Who runs that government,
what kind of a government it will be, what role the United
States will play in it and what role other nations will playЧall
those questions are unanswered. Their answers will be the
political history of the twenty-first century.

There are many symbols in Kinsman's story. I mention
this mainly because most critics have been blind to them. Or
perhaps they think of symbolism only in its psychological
sense, where rockets are considered phallic and a wheel-
shaped space station is thought to be vaginal. That is not the
sort of symbolism I am speaking of.

Kinsman himself is a symbol. A young American male,
full of the adventure of flying, who brings both love and death
to the pristine realm of outer space. In Millennium, he
becomes a Christ figure, and his closest friend, Frank Colt,
takes on the role of Judas. Colt himself symbolizes the
dilemma of the black man in modern America.

The Christian symbolism is at its plainest in the section of
Kinsman where he rescues the injured astronaut on the
surface of the Moon. In that tale, titled "Fifteen Miles" when
it appeared in a science fiction magazine in its original form,
the surface of the Moon becomes a testing ground, a place of
ordeal and punishment. The central question is redemption:

Can Kinsman save his sou!, or is he damned forever? This
becomes the question for all the rest of his life, and forms his
underlying motivation in Millennium.

The technological gadgets of the story also serve as
symbols. Equating Moonbase's water factory with a human