Sunday 30 October 2016

Isolation

Interstellar travel could lead to the isolation of small groups of human beings in space or on other planets. Poul Anderson explores the possibilities.

In his Psychotechnic History:

a spaceship crew and their offspring trapped on a barbaric planet adapt to barbarism;
a women only population reproduces by parthogenesis;
a lost spaceship starts the spacefaring Nomad culture.

In his Technic History:

a spaceship crew stranded on Inkrananka become a phratry of warriors;
a food deficiency means that boys on a colony planet must practice cannibalism to reach puberty;
Kirkasanters can no longer interbreed with galactic humanity.

Humanity is not homogenized but diversified, the ultimate good from Anderson's point of view - especially when those who have had to resort to cannibalism are provided with food that makes the practice unnecessary.

I think that, in Star Trek, Vulcan should have been a small, isolated human colony.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It would make much more sense if Mr. Spock and his people were actually human descendants of a lost colony. I would not need to gag down the implausibility of a human and alien somehow being able to have children. Sort of like what we see with the Kirkasanters and the rest of humanity (aside from them being unable to have children together).

Sean