is surrounded by towers;
at its edge, has low, clustered, peak-roofed houses surrounded by lawns and trees, many tended by machines while their owners make decades-long interstellar journeys, others abandoned because their occupants will not return;
for internal transport, has a monorail and narrow indurite thoroughfares, including an Aldebaran Street, lit by obsolete glowglobes;
among its families, has children born a century or more ago outside the Solar System and adult Kith who have aged at different rates since they last met;
holds a Fair when starcraft are in.
The glowglobes are obsolete because Kith want to return home to a familiar environment.
I don't think that I have summarized that before: yet another exotic environment imagined by Poul Anderson. (However, see One Future Earth. Also, for Kith Town in other periods, see "Words In Starfarers, Chapter 10," here and The Venture League here.)
Starfarers, Chapter 21.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That mention of some houses in Kith Town being already abandoned in "Ghetto" made me wonder if the Kith culture was already starting to slowly decline. Because the economic basis needed for STL trading and traveling over interstellar distances was withering. That is, as time passed, most colonized planets would not find it very rational to attempt keeping up trade with other worlds if it took so LONG to do so. To say nothing of the resources found on the colonized planets and solar systems supplying all that they really needed. Result: less demand for the services of the Kith, and a gradual decline for them.
Sean
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