Returning to the subject at hand, I agree with your diagnosis of the Gods but I'm not sure I agree that Earth "cast them out," or that Sheen is any kind of Earth spirit other than an aberrant or malevolent one. He wants to do the same thing to the Gods that he does to the rat-men, dog-men, and the rest of Earth's species: eat them and dominate them. I see the book's main characters as trapped between a rock and a soft place: the silver being who's eating everything, and the Gods--evolved humans--who are, as you say, worthless narcissists. From the beginning, they have cast themselves out (of Earth's affairs) and when they leave Earth for Andromeda at the end, it's because they're afraid of Sheen, unlike some of the supposedly-lesser-evolved characters who stand up to him. I tend to read the book in terms of DP's agnosticism--she admits the presence of evil but suggests we have no one to lean on but ourselves to combat it. Of course, this interpretation could be wrong: for someone who professes no religion her books are full of religion.
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- tom moody 3-27-2002 4:52 pm