Kinsman himself is a symbol. A young American male, full of the adventure of flying, who brings both love and death to the pristine realm of outer space. In Millennium, he becomes a Christ figure, and his closest friend, Frank Colt, takes on the role of Judas. Colt himself symbolizes the dilemma of the black man in modern America.
The Christian symbolism is at its plainest in the section of Kinsman where he rescues the injured astronaut on the surface of the Moon. In that tale, titled "Fifteen Miles" when it appeared in a science fiction magazine in its original form, the surface of the Moon becomes a testing ground, a place of ordeal and punishment. The central question is redemption:
Can Kinsman save his sou!, or is he damned forever? This becomes the question for all the rest of his life, and forms his underlying motivation in Millennium.
The technological gadgets of the story also serve as symbols. Equating Moonbase's water factory with a human being's heart and blood is obvious enough. So, perhaps, is the symbolism of a lance of light that destroys the death machines of ballistic missiles. But the idea of humankind's reach into space forcing a change in human attitudes on Earth, which pervades the story of Kinsman's life, has escaped the atten- tion of most critics.
There are two aspects to this, in the story. One is the laser-armed satellites, the Star Wars system, placed in orbit to defend against nuclear missile attack. The other is weather control, using technology to tame one of the most fundamen- tal forces on Earth. Push and pull. Negative and positive. Yin and yang. The important point is that once the human race began to extend its ecological niche beyond the limits of planet Earth, all our old ways of thinking became doomed. Most people do not realize this yet. Most are oblivious to the fact that national borders are swiftly losing their meaning in a world of communications satellites, hydrogen bombs, conti- nent-spanning missiles, and the expansion of human life into space.
The facts are there to see, but most people are not emotionally prepared to deal with them. It is through the symbolism of fiction that we prepare our minds for these new concepts. In the truest sense, Chet Kinsman does exist, and his message of hope and peace and love is the ultimate reality.
—Ben Bova West Hartford. March 1987 Connecticut
BOOK
KINSMAN
Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe, Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. Yet the strong man must go ...
—Robert Browning
Age 21
To Mark Chartrand, despite his puns
FROM THE REAR SEAT of the TF-15 jet the mountains of Utah looked like barren wrinkles of grayish brown, an old thread- bare bedcover that had been tossed carelessly across the floor.
"How do you like it up here?"
Chet Kinsman heard the pilot's voice as a disembodied crackle in his helmet earphones. The shrill whine of the turbojet engines, the rush of unbreathably thin air just inches away on the other side of the transparent canopy, were nothing more than background music, muted, unimportant.
"Love it!" he answered to the bulbous white helmet in the seat in front of him.
The cockpit was narrow and cramped. The oxygen he breathed through the rubbery mask had a cold, metallic tang to it. Kinsman could barely move in his seat. The pilot had warned him, "Pull the harness good and snug; you don't want anything flapping loose if you have to eject." Now the safety straps cut into his shoulders.
Yet he felt free.
"How high can we go?" he asked into the mike built into the oxygen mask.
A pause. "Oh, we can leave controlled airspace if we want to. Better'n fifty thousand feet." The pilot had a trace of Southern accent. Alabama, maybe, thought Kinsman. Or Georgia. "Thirty thou's good enough for now, though."
Kinsman grinned to himself. "A lot better than hang gliding."
