Resuming ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’ differently

Just before the cargo-module in which the alien has been confined is opened—all of the crew members are watching the actions of the investigation team on the videoscreens in keen expectation—Aaron suddenly experiences ‘an odd oceanic awareness’ (A137). In Freudian psychoanalysis, oceanic awareness is the (revived) feeling of the symbiotic– semiotic oneness with the mother, in other words, the imaginary return to paradise discussed repeatedly in the previous chapters. During this experience Aaron is affected by a flow of thoughts which contains an important textual indication for the reading of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’.

In the phrase ‘a new earth and heaven’ we remotely hear the echoes of the biblical Book of Revelation. In the context of Tiptree's science fiction cosmology, the commonplace expression becomes to point to what can be called an apocalyptic longing, a longing for the actual revelation of the end of times and the beginning of a radically new era. Considered in the light of Aaron's prior views, however, such a desire is quite remarkable. Until now we have come to know Aaron as a mild sceptic, doubting very much humanity's ability to change fundamentally so that its ‘animal part’ would be eliminated. He even fears the very striving after such a change, for it could easily turn into its own reversal, the very destruction of humankind.