ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests some striking parallels between Aeneas’ retrieval of the Golden Bough and subsequent descent into the underworld, and Carl Sagan’s creation of a Golden Record, the first human-made object to leave the solar system. In particular, it suggests that the descent into hell can be read as an analog for the ascent into space and suggest some ways that Aeneas’ struggle is very much like our own. The Voyagers remain only the bearers of the Golden Record. Imagined as an analogue of the Golden Bough, the Golden Record reflects on humanity: to retrieve the Golden Record would be an unprecedented technological feat. It would mean the apocalypse of the Anthropocene had been delayed long enough that some level of harmonious cooperation had allowed for the development of space technology capable of leaving the solar system, finding a distant speck of satellite, a golden needle in a haystack, grasping it, diverting it from its trajectory, and returning it home.
