Sunday 7 September 2014

Chunderban Desai

Chunderban Desai:

is a native of the human-colonized planet, Ramanujan, where there is a Mount Gandhi;

is married with seven children, four grown and settled on different planets (imagine living in such an immense civilization);

had worked in regions facing Betelgeuse and Merseia;

was assigned to the Terran diplomatic delegation that ended the Jihannath crisis, where his Merseian opposite number was Uldwyr;

is fluent in the principal Merseian language, Eriau, as Uldwyr is in Anglic;

is now a commissioner, thus intermediate between a resident in a single culture and a governor of a galactic sector;

specifically, is High Commissioner of the Virgilian System at the opposite end of the Terran Empire from Jihannath;

thus, is based in Nova Roma on the human-colonized planet Aeneas which had spearheaded the revolt of Sector Alpha Crucis against the Empire;

later, will teach at the Diplomatic Academy on Terra for a year before retiring to Ramanujan where he will continue to develop the cyclical theory of history that he explains to Flandry.

One of the many characters that we would like to know more about, Desai's single reappearance, to converse with Flandry in a later novel, is both unexpected and highly enjoyable.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I agree in finding Chunderban Desai a very interesting character in the Technic History stories, both for his role in thwarting Aycharaych's schemes on Aeneas and his later rediscovery of the theories of John K. Hord. Hord's theories on how civlizations rise and fall and begin to "germinate" again is almost the only one (aside from Eric Voegelin's work) that seems to apply to real history, to make sense to me. In fact, so much so as to make me very uneasy because I can see too well how it applies to the US.

To my frustration, I have been unable to find any books or essays by Hord expounding his thoughts on the rise and fall of civilizations. The best I've been able to find is in Poul Anderson's essay "Concerning Future Histories" (BULLETIN OF THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, Fall 1979) and his novels A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS and A STONE IN HEAVEN.

Glory to the Emperor! Sean