When Jim Baen and I were first discussing this book, what should go into it, he suggested that the motif and title be “The Ways of Love.” I felt this was too limited a theme, and we settled on “Explorations.”
Each story deals with some aspect of humanity’s future movement into the cosmos, which we both hope so much will come to pass. Then Jim noticed, to our mutual surprise, that each is also a love story anyway.
On second thought, perhaps this is no coincidence. The Greeks distinguished three emotions which English lumps together as “love.” Yet are the three kinds really unrelated? Might not sexual love (eros), love for God (agape), and every other sort of affection (phile, from which we get such words as ‘
‘philosophy” and * ‘philanthropy”) spring from a common source, or even be different faces of the same mystery?
How shall we think of that emotion which drives human beings to explore?
Romanticists to the contrary, it is not universal in our species. At least, in many people it is subordinate to other desires. They are apt to resent public attention given to anything except the objects of their own yearnings. Explorers, including scientists of every description, are usually more tolerant, though this may be a matter of necessity rather than temperament.
