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A review by jenne
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
4.0
A really charming SF story! It's the far future, and there are many Earth colonies on many worlds. Our hero is from a very Romantic culture (lots of art, music, dueling, courtly love, etc) and ends up on a sort of ultra-Lutheran world (very religious, rational, no frivolity).
I liked the little throwaway bits of Earth culture here and there, like how each society gets to make up its own historical facts (e.g. Milton Friedman was eaten by cannibals in Zurich) or how people still sing "The Happy Wanderer" when they go on an outdoor outing:
"...someone was starting to sing what I had assumed was an old Occitan hiking song, though I have since heard it in many places. 'Valde retz, Valde ratz' means 'the most real things are the most sincerely imagined,' to give it in the bland Terstad, and it is one of the first proverbs most Occitan children learn..."
I liked the little throwaway bits of Earth culture here and there, like how each society gets to make up its own historical facts (e.g. Milton Friedman was eaten by cannibals in Zurich) or how people still sing "The Happy Wanderer" when they go on an outdoor outing:
"...someone was starting to sing what I had assumed was an old Occitan hiking song, though I have since heard it in many places. 'Valde retz, Valde ratz' means 'the most real things are the most sincerely imagined,' to give it in the bland Terstad, and it is one of the first proverbs most Occitan children learn..."