Fiona Moore wrote:
Better to take your chances on the Liberator, though, than to spend the rest of your life on a radiation-soaked planet rife with primitives, surely?
It seems to me that you are the one trivializing Meegat. You seem to be arguing that she should be seen by the others as a child in need of wiser heads to look after her. I saw her as a grown woman who was quite able to speak up and make her wishes/needs known about launching the rocket. And she never said a word about wanting to leave the planet herself, did she? Or even hint that anyone else did either. Why isn't it good and non-chauvinistic that they respected her autonomy?
It seems to me that having Avon (and/or Blake and/or the entire crew) decide that it would be "better" for Meegat to join them on the Liberator *would* be patronizing. Who set them up to be her guardians? Why is the take of a stranger who has known her and her circumstances for a few minutes to be assumed to be wiser than that of Meegat herself with a vastly greater knowledge of the situation?
And as for:
I
mean, she wished for the rocket to be launched, but once it's gone, there's not much left to do but live out the rest of your life. As Chris Boucher said, be careful what you wish for...
Gee. Does that mean *everyone* who achieves their heartfelt wish might as well kill themselves at once? (I picture all those Olympic champions strangling themselves with the ribbons from their gold medals.)
What you do, of course, is settle on a new wish. You turn to your second more heartfelt goal. Or numbers 2 through six combined, which you'd had to neglect previously. You take up flute lessons. You breed rare orchids. You set up a free love commune and have Saturday night orgies. You practice yoga. You garden.
Some of us think 'living out the rest of your life' is a fine thing.
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)