The Jovian Sayings

“Even though they sailed across the vast emptiness in spaceships and lived under a strange sky, it is not that they changed their nature also.” Thus observes Miriam Hahn, a Ganymedean historian of the 29th century, reviewing the history of the colonial societies on the Jovian system, paraphrasing Horace. The Jovian Sayings is a part of collected sayings of Ganymedean people, robots as well as humans, which survived the Ganymedean Catastrophe inflicted by a broken piece of Comet Rashid in 2998. The sayings, comprising pithy satires, earthy maxims, and lyrical poems, reveal in condensed forms the idiosyncratic features of a frontier society that had to constantly struggle to survive and expand in the harsh and unforgiving extraterrestrial environment. They are relevant to the terrestrial societies of the 21st century, as the editor of the salvaged book concludes In fact, as we reflect on their insightful sayings, we realize that we could get valuable lessons from them. As Horace said, Change the name, and the tale is about you.