/lit/ - Literature

Lest We Forget Thee, Earth (1958)
This is a fix-up. It's three stories edited into one story. I dislike this practice.
100,000 years ago Earth was at the peak of its empire which spanned a myriad of galaxies, but was eventually reduced to almost nothing by those it once ruled.
Although there's a lot that questionable at best, it seems human resistance ended 30,000 years ago.
Hallam Navarre is an advisor to the planetary leader, which is a traditional position for humans. How do you know you're looking at a human? Because all humans shave their heads! Various non-human races are described in some detail.
He tells the leader that he will find the Chalice of Death or Life, whichever really they say both, that will give the leader eternal life, but is just something he basically made up on the spot. I assume it's meant to be the Holy Grail. So he's sent out to find it. He decides to best place to look would be the mythical home world of humanity, Earth, assuming it ever existed. Why there? Because the plot requires it. Along the way he meets a female advisor to a planetary and she is basically the love interest, more or less. They find a 13,000 year old physical book. That's some great preservation there, although I don't know why wouldn't be digitized, but so went the times. The book gives them a hint of where to go.
So they travel more than a billion light years in a week. Yes, that's correct. I was going to put it in all caps, but it's rather understated, so I left it as understated as well. Sol is now called Dubihsar and Earth is Velidoon. Upon arrival they find primitive humans of questionable genetic viability who lead them to 10,000 humans in cryostasis from 30,000 years ago. Clearly the non-humans did a terrible job in their war against humanity. They didn't even destroy Earth, let alone search it. The current inhabitants of Earth are never mentioned again. Naturally many of them decide it's time for a Second Empire and for humanity to conquer the universe once more. Navarre says "No." and that's that. This covers 33% of the novella. The rest of the novella is trying to create a fake military to intimidate everyone else into leaving them alone. Does it work? Of course it does.

The only bit I liked:
"We'll miss you here," Antrok said.
Navarre shrugged. "Thanks. But you know it's not really true. You can manage without me. By the Cosmos, you have to manage without me! The day Earth finds that just one particular man is absolutely indispensable to its existence is the day you might as well crawl back into the Chalice and go back to sleep."

In other words:
"Thanks. But you know it's not really true. You can manage without a dedicated OP. The day /sffg/ finds that just one particular man is absolutely indispensable to its existence is the day you might as stop posting and never have the thread made again."

Rating: 1.5/5
This has a multitude of problems that really detracted from my enjoyment.
This ends my weekly Silverberg novellas.