Hawking, meet Weston; Weston, Hawking.

I'm no literary scholar, but I have said on many occasions that the Space Trilogy is the most relevant fiction addressing some of our modern problems. I read here that Stephen Hawking says that extra-terrestrial conquest is necessary to man's survival.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

I don't know what else Hawking said in his speech, but I'll just assume it was similar to Weston's comments in "Out of the Silent Planet." I'll provide a few snippets (remember that Weston was talking to the Malacandrans, not humans, but I still bet the two scientists would have agreed on the substance):

"To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization--with our science, medicine, and law, our armies, our archetecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supercede you is the right of the higher over the lower . . ."

. . .

"Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal tatoos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization."

. . .

"[Life] has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and to-day in her highest form--civilized man--and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplantary leap which will, perhaps, place her for ever beyond the reach of death."

. . .

"It is in her right," said Weston, "the right, or, if you will, the might of Life herself, that I am prepared without flinching to plant the flag of man on the soil of Malacandra: to march on, step by step, superceding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find, claiming planet after planet, system after system, till our posterity--whatever strange form and yet unguessed mentality they have assumed--dwell in the universe wherever the universe is habitable"

. . .

It just goes on and on, until we meet Weston again in Perelandra, where he is, of course, possessed by the devil. I guess if the only measure of success is longevity, it doesn't matter what kind of company you keep as long as you keep the company longer than everyone else.