We like to imagine Poul Anderson's Technic History extending into an indefinite future but why not also further into galactic space? Are there rival empires or other comparable civilizations in other spiral arms or even in other parts of this spiral arm? Might one civilization launch an exploratory mission around the galaxy? Might a scenario emerge more like that in Anderson's
After Doomsday where discrete civilization clusters have little direct contact but nevertheless some mutual knowledge. It is a safe bet that there is no other civilization cluster very close to Technic civilization or it would have been heard of but there is plenty of room in the rest of the galaxy:
"...in a universe that produces sophonts as casually as it produces snowflakes."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson,
Captain Flandry:
Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 7.
That is the universe of the Technic History whether or not it is also ours. Voluminous though it is, the Technic History notionally might be a very small part of a much vaster galactic history.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It makes sense, given the kind of FTL drive seen in the Technic stories, to think there are other interstellar civilizations in remoter parts of the Galaxy. And the Empire, Roidhunate, Domain of Ythri, Betelgeuse, Gorrazan, etc., comprise the civilization cluster of Technic culture. That is, the space faring powers which learned FTL and its associated technologies from humans. These domains included societies which had also learned FTL but did not set up their own independent realms, such as Trillia and Cynthia.
Ad astra! Sean
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