Being Ballard, it’s an allegorical tale, yes, but not for anything so bland as mortality.
The last line, about worshipping the station, is the reveal. Ballard saw within man a tendency to underestimate the depth of the problems he tackled, and a tendency to end up absolutely enmired within false premises, within artifice - these themes are endemic to many of his dystopias.
My best guess is that this is a parable on exactly those themes.
I think Ballard's thing is not about people's tendency to underestimate the weirdness of the universe, but about the universe being far weirder than we think.
Which is very close to being a distinction without a difference, i know. But i think it's rare that Ballard frames this as a flaw in people; rather, it's a terrifying fact about the universe.
I guess it's about the bias towards one's own world view. (And eventually the worship of beliefs, which are mere constructs of our limited knowledge.)
The space travelers travel from transit station to transit station.
What do they assume when they stumble upon an uninhabited Earth? It's a transit station.
It's not only the bias of the space traveler, but also that of the reader who assumes that the space traveler is familiar with the concept of people living on planets, and therefore since the traveler did not conclude that this was an uninhabited planet, the reader already assumes it cannot be Earth.
I personally like sci-fi for the sci-fi, as long as the story and characters are interesting and well written. It can include commentary on society and politics as a lot of good stories do, but it's not the main reason for reading or watching science fiction for me. It is supposed to be set in a fictional world, after all. One of imagination and exploring possibilities.
And if it's just used as a medium for commenting on contemporary issues, I'm not interested. There's other mediums for that like the news or documentaries.
Teleologically speaking, that's one of its uses... But I think the whole point of sci-fi is more about story-telling through "what-ifs" of varying feasibility driven by vision and imagination. It's easy for that to become ideological commentary, even propaganda because our visions are affected by our worldview. But personally, I still wouldn't say that commentary defines any genre of writing besides commentary.
This is honestly the most hilarious possible misread of J.G. Ballard, perhaps one of the most overtly politically ideological sci-fi authors who ever wrote. Read High-Rise (or watch the surprisingly good movie!). Read Concentration City.
