Re:Gene Cernan has died
by Justsignedup on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @11:24AM
(#13418775)
Eternity is made.
The keepers keep disasters from happening, thus humanity is kept in a generally mediocre state, no major struggles, etc.
By the time humanity, with no struggle, reach the ability to travel the stars, the stars are occupied, we're late.
The future eternity (eternity itself has a timeline independent of the original) realized this and decided to let humans fend for themselves and thus fix the long term problem.
That's one of my favorite sci-fi novels and it's eerily ahead of its time IMO. Among many difficult questions, it also deals with
"is it good for humankind to be ruled by an invisible technocratic elite?"
"are we unknowingly increasing long-term existential risk by concerning ourselves first with short-term safety?"
In this book humans have at some point invented time travel. Subsequently an organization ('Eternity') is born out of it to regulate and protect humans accross centuries. But, because of it, Humanity never left Earth. The main protagonist stops time travel from being invented and kickstarts the nuclear age, this is supposed to start robots and later Foundation.
At least that's what I remember, I tried to summarize without reading Wikipedia for a change.
The key of the story is that either humans invent space travel and have a chance to thrive, or stay on Earth and are guaranteed to become extinct.