Vintage paperback Since before the Age of Space itself, the men and women of Planet Earth have yearned Outward, knowing on the deepest level that the Race’s future lay not in the soft comfort of the planetary womb, but in the cold and empty spaces between the Stars, with the unknown rewards and certain dangers of a future all unbounded. Always these brave ones have seen themselves as the carriers of the lamp of civilized humanity unto alien savages sitting in darkness. But. what if reality is different-what if, on the arrival of humans bearing the gift of millennia of culture and all our aspirations, — The Gods Laughed