One of the things that stood out for me in Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand was the impact that sheer size in population can have on life (I saw one other blog post on this but I did not read it so hopefully there is not any overlap). One instance in which this is exemplified is the initial matching of Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth. When we first find out that Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth are supposedly fit for each other, the two men have been characterized in ways that made them radically different from each other. The entire prologue followed Rat Korga and described life on Rhyonon. In the beginning of the novel, Rat Korga undergoes essentially a lobotomy, and as a result, the whole introduction was written in a very somber, dull tone. Throughout Rat Korga’s time on Rhyonon, he lives life as a RAT – in other words, a slave - and spends his time doing mindless labor while being continually abused. At one point, one of Rat Korga’s employers beats him while in a rage because Rat has been sold to a different employer. This experience perfectly encapsulates Rat’s experience on Rhyonon:

He worked and watched stories for three years; then one morning the man in charge came to kick him awake.
He pushed himself up to his elbow.
‘They sold you!’ The man kicked him again, about as hard as he’d ever been kicked, so that he fell back down and had to up again. ‘How you like that! They sold you out from under me! I’ve really worked on you, too, you mindless rat! You don’t treat a damned man like that. (Delany, 15)

People on Rhyonon tended to view RATs as subhuman slaves who were more like tools than people. The existence of mindless slaves was not the only primitive aspect of Rhyonon. As we learn later on in the novel, Rhyonon is also largely cut off from the Web and therefore the rest of the universe, which makes Rat Korga seem even more primitive. Compare this with section with the main body of the novel, where we get a first-person account of Marq Dyeth’s adventures. Here, the tone dramatically shifts to become more upbeat to reflect the increased vibrancy of the new worlds that we hear about. In contrast to Rat Korga, Marq Dyeth is very mentally sharp, which enables him to be an industrial diplomat, traveling from world to world interacting with a wide variety of species. His job requires him to be extremely familiar with the Web, which further sets him apart from Rat since Rat has always been very out of touch with his world and the surrounding universe. In spite of all these differences, however, Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth are found to be almost perfect erotic matches for each other. What does it mean when two completely different people are found to be erotically ideal for each other? I think one of the things that the whole matchmaking episode served was to highlight the impact that sheer size in population can have on life. In one memorable line from the novel, Japril states, “But the thing you can be sure of in this day and age is that no one is the ‘most’ of anything; just the ‘most’ you happen to know about” (Delany, 159). The matchmaking episode and the line from Japril remind us that if humanity ever reaches a point where we are living in a galactic civilization, there can really be no certainty in life, even with the presence of the Web. Life will have reached such a grand scale that everything can always be called into question because there may be some world light years away that has the answer. People involved in romantic relationships could wonder whether one of the 12 million other perfect erotic matches would work better, and with the aid of the Web, they could realistically reach those people. Ultimately, living on such a galactic scale would offer great diversity in life but perhaps also instability.