Sunday 20 March 2016

Earlier Empires

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Ythrians and Merseians get the hyperdrive from Terrans who invented it independently. However, it is known that there was a previous star traveling race and we learn that they were the telepathic Chereonites. How many such earlier races are there in sf? No doubt many. I think that there was a previous civilization in Ursula K Le Guin's future history although that is one that I have neither read recently nor reread.

We will refer to one other work by Anderson, four by Blish and one by Niven. In Anderson's After Doomsday, the FTL drive spreads like dandelion seeds among many intelligent species. It is not known whether it was discovered once or many times or by whom.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, there have been four great civilizations in the Milky Way:

I ?;
II the Vegan Tyranny;
III the Earthman culture;
IV the Web of Hercules.

In Blish's Jack Loftus novels, the Heart Stars empire is much older than humanity and the energy beings called "Angels" knew several previous interstellar civilizations in other galaxies. (Blish, like Anderson, goes intergalactic a few times.) In Blish's "This Earth of Hours," the Terrestrial Matriarchy comes into conflict with an ancient telepathic Central Empire whereas, in his "A Style In Treason," High Earth's adversary, the Green Exarch, draws tithes from six fallen empires older than man.

In Larry Niven's Known Space History, the now extinct Thrintun ruled the galaxy three billion years ago and, like the Chereionites, left a telepathic legacy.

6 comments:

David Birr said...

Paul:
Andre Norton uses the term "Forerunner," and some of her books spell out that there have been NUMEROUS unconnected species throughout interstellar history, which all get lumped together under that term because the historians haven't found enough to know what their true names are. Sometimes all that is known is that SOMEONE built something on thus-and-such planet, but who they were, and often even WHAT their work was intended for, remain mysteries. Forerunner buildings and devices are found in many of Norton's stories.

In a passage near the end of *Uncharted Stars*, a revived member of one Forerunner species is identified by an archaeologist as "Luar!" She replies that, no, her people were called "Thalan;" although they closely associated with the Luar folk for a time, "so that we left traces of our passage there," the Thalan were never truly OF Luar. (Archaeologists are likely to FIGHT for the opportunity to interview her, living time capsule that she is....)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

I've read some of Andre Norton's books, enough of them that I came across her use of "Forerunners" in them. I don't remember reading UNCHARTED STARS, however. How did this "forerunner" survive, btw? By means of some kind of suspended animation, cryonics, or even a stasis field?

Paul: and the Thrint we see in Larry Niven's Known Space series is one of the most unpleasant speculative aliens I've ever seen!

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
Her means of survival gets into spoiler territory, but I'll say it's more a kind of technologically assisted reincarnation -- and NOT one of the more convincing scenes in Norton's work (much though I love her, Andre Norton was never enormously interested in keeping the "science" part of her science fiction plausible).

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

Understood, what you said about UNCHARTED STARS. I think writers who set out to write "hard" SF are bound to keep the "science" in their SF reasonably plausible.

And "technologically assisted reincarnation"? I think Poul Anderson's speculations about how advanced computer science plus making cloned bodies in the HARVEST OF STARS books and GENESIS to download personalities into AI units or living bodies comes close to that kind of reincarnation!

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
To quote a reviewer named Richard Brooks, writing in 1971, "Miss Norton's main thrust is not in the area of science and technology, but in that of human society." Also, "Miss Norton is rather unacquainted with the 'hard sciences'...."

Roger Zelazny's *Lord of Light* also involves technological reincarnation, transferring mental patterns into cloned bodies. But Norton's version is more like magic with a machine involved "somehow." Most *Star Trek* episodes were more hard-SF than she was interested in writing. It was the people, the personalities, that she focused on.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

I understand your comment about Andre Norton's interest lay in "...the people, the personalities, that she focused on." It's my view that SF focusing on real or plausible science does not necessarily contradict taking an interest in one's characters as persons. My belief is Poul Anderson, S.M. Stirling, Dave Drake, Jerry Pournelle, etc., managed to write SF doing both.

It's possible that Norton's lack of interest in "hard science" had something to do with why I never became a big fan of her works. But I would need to read or reread some of her books to be sure of that.

Sean