Up for Discussion-New World, No World

Some people think there's a brave new world coming. I am not among them. I think it will only be the same old world in a different hat. Of course, there are electronic developments coming along fast and furious these days. Television and movies, for instance, are getting better and better in the way they produce images. But what's the use of that? The shows aren't getting better and better. And while email is certainly a brave new convenience–as long as it's controlled–the letters themselves, written on a computer, aren't any better than the letters written on typewriters, which in turn weren't any better than the letters written by hand, with pens. Words are words, however they're rendered.

As for books, Roger Sutton said it all in a recent elegant, well-reasoned, and gratifying Horn Book editorial. Talk about your reruns and remakes–and sequels! There are a lot of timid souls these days in some of the publishing houses, if it's possible to be, at one and the same time, timid and venal. They're timid about taking chances on new writers with new ideas, because these might not make any money. Harry Potter has been a blessing for kids, but has been rather a disaster for the field in general. The books demonstrate too graphically that there's real money to be had out there, if only you can find the formula. Still, that isn't new. Finding the formula is the same thing as striking oil, or hitting on a vein of gold. We like that kind of thing here in America, and why not? It's mainly why our ancestors came over here in the first place: riches, the land that contained them, and the freedom to go out and search for them. So challenges like that are brave, maybe, but they're not new.

It's true, certainly, that a lot of things about the world as it is right now are different from what they used to be, and these same things will be even more different 20, 50, and 500 years from now. But it's things that are different. People aren't any different, and it's people that count, people who embody the real essence of life. So maybe the brave new world some people are expecting isn't going to be new at all. Maybe the changes will just be superficial. And yet, who can be sure? I wish I could be sure. But I'm no historian, no sociologist, not any kind of scientist, not even a seer or a fortune-teller. Like millions of others, I'm just a person with opinions. And the funny thing is that as a person gets older, the future holds less and less interest. The introductory phrase, "50 years from now" which had so much clout for my generation 50 years ago, now only brings on a shrug. We don't care. We won't be here. Except there are aspects of the time 50 years from now that we do care about. The environment, for instance. The education of our great-grandchildren. Little things like that.

But aside from those few details, the only part of the future that interests me is so far in the future that it scarcely qualifies as something to care about, and yet it's been hanging around in my mind since I first learned about the solar system. It's been hanging around in the minds of a lot of us, and it's been shaping the way we look at a great many things, not just the night sky. Here it is: How can there be nothing on the other side of the universe? What is the meaning of nothing?

My sister once told me that in the process of attempting to confront the question herself, she found that all at once she was looking squarely at the outermost limit of her intelligence, the place where it ended, the call beyond which she simply could not go. This, I think, is a good description of the situation. Here we are on a late summer day, considering what the future may be like for the readers we are united in caring about, and meanwhile, out there beyond our walls, beyond the United States, beyond all the world's oceans and mountains, beyond the sun itself, space goes on and on forever, dark and gold and blank except for the occasional star, without clocks or calendars, without air or water, even without an up or a down. So what do we make of that? What can we make of that, given the limits of human intelligence?

Well, some human intelligences are less limited than others. The June 25th issue of Time soberly announced, on its cover, an article called "How the Universe Will End." The article is fascinating, utterly humbling. It says that for a long time there have been two conflicting theories about how things will come to a finish: one, that the momentum caused by the Big Bang will turn around and bring everything hurtling back again into itself, causing what they call a Big Crunch, and the other is that the Big Bang momentum will keep on sending things outward forever. Now scientists have proved to their satisfaction that the second theory is correct: the world will end as T. S. Eliot said it would, "Not with a bang but a whimper." "Earth should remain habitable for another few billion years," says the article, and then, in what it calls a Degenerate Era, lasting trillions of years, planets will "detach from stars; stars and planets will evaporate from galaxies, and most of the ordinary matter in the universe will be locked up in degenerate stellar remnants–dead stars and black holes. Eventually….the protons themselves will decay." After this comes a Black Hole Era lasting more trillions of years than I could grasp, and then–comes the Dark Era in which there will be virtually nothing at all. Nothing, whether we understand what this is or not.

Still, consider the sentence, "Earth should remain habitable for another few billion years." Is it a relief to know that we don't have to sell everything just yet and get out the cloaks and robes? It's really too soon to go up to a mountain top to wait for the end, the way some sects keep doing. And after all, why should we care anyway? None of us will be here. But even if we don't care, all this new information will still hang around in the backs of our minds. How will we deal with the concept of an approaching Degenerate Era followed by a Black Hole Era followed by nothing at all, a great big zero?

Well, what I think is that we will deal with it the way we've always dealt with it. The concept of an end to the world is, after all, scarcely a new concept. It is tied inescapably to the concept of our own deaths, and so goes back to the very beginning. Likewise, the concept of there being nothing on the other side of the universe isn't new either. At least, not especially new. I think it will go right on being impossible to look out at the night sky and not wonder what's out there beyond the Milky Way, as long as there's a Milky Way to wonder beyond. It's impossible not to push the science as far as it will go so that we can look, either through an immense telescope or through the window of a space ship. We want to know, we're scared to know, we peek and shiver, and we even laugh. Remember that lovely story about President Reagan, in a cabinet meeting suggesting an exploratory trip to the sun? "But, Mr. President," protests a secretary, "we can't do that. It would be far too hot." The president pauses, thinks this over, and finally says triumphantly, "Well, then, we'll go at night!"

That other question, "If there's nothing, then what is the meaning of anything?" is as old as its forerunner about the meaning of nothing. It's a question we have always answered by ignoring its implications and continuing to assign meaning to whatever we choose, thereafter fighting to the death anyone who has assigned meaning to something else. So maybe we're all crazy. I don't know. But we have our good points. It seems to me that, random though our development may have been, however poorly we may run our various societies, however cruel and self-serving and greedy we may be, and however disinterested Nature may be in our welfare, we humans, with our indomitable egos, are equipped with two qualities that will serve us well as things progress–or deteriorate–two things that have served us well from the beginning. First, we are blessed with the ability to laugh, and second, we are storytellers.

There's no way to know for certain what the stories we tell will be like as the future hurries by, but stories will happen. They always have. We will be telling them until close to the end of those few billion years that the Earth has left. They will be the same in essence as they always were: stories about our world, our fears, our dreams, the things that make us laugh. There will be stories that will give us ways to imagine, understand, and deal with all the mysteries of our lives, up to and including those black holes in the universe. And when the few billion years are all used up, well, there won't be anyone around to wonder what comes next.

I don't think it matters much how these future stories will be told. Probably they will be like the letters I mentioned earlier: just the same whether sent by e-mail, or typed, or written out longhand with a pen. Or scratched wordlessly onto the walls of a cave. Maybe what we know physically as books won't survive, but so what? The important thing is that the stories keep coming, not what form they will take. And one thing is for sure: all the changes will be taken for granted by the children of their times. What child today is astonished by computers? When they are my age, there will be changes that astonish them, but their children won't turn a hair. And so it will go. Each new batch of changes will seem completely everyday and natural to each new batch of young.

The important thing is the stories, and the unchanging human nature they serve. A woman named Irene Peter, about whom I know absolutely nothing, is reported to have said, "Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed."

So we'll go right on, doing what we need to do to make life seem worthwhile, and I'm not going to worry about it. For I am temporary. So are we all. The best thing to do is to look at the night sky once in a while and remember that everything is temporary. And then continue dealing with the human things we all have to deal with. Some of these things can give us immense pleasure and satisfaction, for there are things that matter, things that have always had meaning and will go right on having meaning through every one of those few billion years life has remaining. Children, for instance. And stories. There are a few things, thank goodness, that won't change at all.

A version of this talk was delivered at the 2001 Summer Institute sponsored by the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, Simmons College, Boston, MA.