I finished Halo 4 tonight. Fun game, not sure I approve of every choice, but one line right at the end got me thinking.
While looking out over Earth from the deck of a space station, one of the characters talks about how, although he wasn’t born or raised there, he always saw Earth as his home, and visits are emotionally impactful. Two thoughts on that:
First, it’s interesting to see how different science fiction settings handle the concept of a homeworld. Sometimes it’s really important. Sometimes Earth gets lost like in the Skyward Saga by Brandon Sanderson (like the planet literally disappears and they can’t find it lol; the moon is just sitting there in orbit and the alien attack fleet is like, huh?). Sometimes it fades from relevant and is just another planet. In the Earth Girl series by Janet Edwards, Earth is known for having the three H’s handicaps, hospitals, and history, because certain people are forced to live on earth or else die of a mysterious illness and so they put a bunch of medical stuff there. Ironically, Earth is one of the most populated planets, but the widespread use of portals means that population location is largely superfluous, anyways. Star Wars doesn’t have a human homeworld, though some speculate that Coruscant was the location where humanity emerged. I could go on. What matters is that there’s an interesting bucket of sci-fi books where Earth doesn’t matter at all, and others where it’s far away, and yet more where it matters a lot. Halo is one of those, and Earth is the best defended, most populated(?), and most secret of humanity’s dominions, which is part of why Halo 3 is such a cool game.
Second, the concept of seeing a homeworld as a home, despite never having been there is reminiscent of the concept of longing for God that C. S. Lewis discusses (somewhere, I’m very sure). The void, where nostalgia for a place you can’t remember ever being, in some sci-fi settings is labeled as a desire for a homeworld, rather than a heavenly home. The irony is that the people in space are in something of a heavenly home while feeling that pull to Earth (or whatever is beyond it). Another place you can see this theme is in certain musical descriptions. In the Princess and the Goblin, Irene hears music played by her great-great-grandmother which is indescribable, but where she knows that something true and beautiful was poured into her, and her life, in rare moments, echoes that tune, though the memory is impossible. Perhaps that’s also why in Lord of the Rings, the world is sung into being. That song, that melody, transcends the stories and gets at something realer, something truer than prose or poetry can adequately describe. I hope you’re listening for it as you walk outside tomorrow, and I hope the sound of laughter sparks an impossible half-felt recollection of lyrics that you know you’ve heard before.
If this was loony and/or didn’t make sense and/or felt like me dropping a bunch of unconnected books, blame the fact that I’m writing it past midnight and that I had fun Star Wars trivia to share.