Ecumenical Twilight Updated

By NASA/JPL/DLR - http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00502 (TIFF image link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92698

By NASA/JPL/DLR - http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00502 (TIFF image link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92698

I updated John Reilly's short story, Ecumenical Twilight, with a linked table of contents. I love this story. Like so much classic scifi, it is an deep essay on politics wrapped in a shallow speculation about the possibility of life on Europa, the moon of Jupiter.

There are images from this story I just can't get out of my head: the ecumenical empire with five capitals, one in each major part of the world. What a world with a declining population but a high standard of living might look like. How a confessional state might have a light touch on the non-believers in its midst.

In my opinion, this is at least as good as the submissions in the Writers of the Future volume I reviewed recently.