Wednesday 12 November 2014

Settling Avalon II

Nat Falkayn grows up in Chartertown on one of the human-colonized Hesperian Islands of the planet Avalon, where he is taught the Planha language. This includes both words and bodily signs although a human being cannot reproduce the latter. When, occasionally, an Ythrian is a dinner guest at the house of Nat's grandfather, David, or his father, Nicholas, the conversation is usually in Planha, not in Anglic, which encourages Nat to learn the Ythrians' language. This becomes helpful when the Weathermaker Choth invites him for Freedom Week.

Nicholas says that, in Nat's generation, the two species must come to know each other well. Three hundred years later, the Governor of Sector Pacis still refers to the biracial culture as being created on Avalon. More centuries after that, Dominic Flandry says that intelligent races will survive the Empire and will "'...build fascinating new civilizations...'" (Flandry's Legacy, p. 75), adding that mixed species cultures, like the one on Avalon, "...look especially promising." What others are there?

What we need is a post-Imperial novel set in an interstellar civilization led by Avalon and other multi-species planets. Nicholas Falkayn, Governor Saracoglu and Dominic Flandry point towards such a future but it remains just out of our reach.

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

There IS one other planet in the Technic series featuring a TRIPLE human/non human colony: Imhotep, in the Patrician system, where the Empire resettled the surviving Tigeries and Sea People from the destroyed planet Starkad. Humans occupied the higher lands, where they could breath the atmosphere, while the Tigeries were settled on the lowlands/coasts, and the piscoid Sea People settled in the oceans.

True, this kind of mixed colony was an accident, due to the need to find new homes for the Starkadian survivors, but as time passes, I can see strange new hybrid cultures arising on Imhotep. One difference from Avalon is obvious: the Imhotepans, esp. the Tigeries, WANTED to be part of the Empire, and were grateful for how it had saved their race from extinction.

The glimpses we see of life on Imhotep, among both humans and Tigeries, were intriguing and I wish we could have gotten more! I should add that the Sea People, due to them being piscoids, were not likely to affect the other races on Imhotep as strongly as humans and Tigeries would infuence each other.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
And, of course, there is the small but influential zmayi population on Dennitza.
Paul.