[KineticLensman]

(disclosure: I am not religious). Yes. Ecclesiastes has some great and often quoted lines: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die…” “…There is nothing new under the sun”. It’s not a typical old testament book, which I think is why I finished it.

(going really off topic here)

I was inspired to look at the Biblical version after reading the awesome “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny, in which a poet on a mission to Mars uses it as a basis for communicating with the ancient Martian elders. Incidentally, a copy of Zelazny’s 1969 story was landed on Mars in 2008 on a DVD carried by the Phoenix probe [0]. If 'The Martian' was the perfect story of engineering on Mars, 'A Rose for Ecclesiastes' is perhaps the perfect poetic look at the planet, at least on a par with "The Silver Locusts".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(spacecraft)#Phoenix_D...

[_urga]

Thanks for the pointer to “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”.