Long before he has employed a Shalmuan as his butler, Dominic Flandry, commanding Asieneuve, while en route from Terra to Llynathawr, stops at Shalmu where references to heavy taxes, the new resident, the Emperor, barbarians, the slave market, a legate and public crucifixions make the Terran Empire sound like the Roman Empire writ large whereas the phrase:
"...the whispering silvery psuedograss..." (p. 394)
- recalls Poul Anderson's recurrent reminder that, although an extrasolar planet is unlikely to grow recognizable grass, it will probably have some equivalent vegetation.
Anderson uniquely incorporates what was originally a pulp magazine space opera series, "Captain Flandry," into a serious speculative future history series. His Terran Empire becomes not just a space age Roman Empire but a reasoned reflection on the dynamics of civilizations.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And part of that "reasoned reflection" by Anderson included rationalizng the existence of slavery, as seen in the original Flandry stories. In fact, in one of his letters to me, Anderson traced the existence of that form of slavery back to the libertarianism of Solar Commonwealth and Polesotechnic League times. For a fuller discussion by me, I hope interested readers will look up my article "Crime and Punishment in the Terran Empire."
Ad astra! Sean
The neo-Toynbean theory of history Poul took up was based on a study of the Roman empire. Too closely based, IMHO.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That was probably true in Poul Anderson's earlier years as a writer. But, by the time he was writing A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, Anderson was far more influenced by the thought of John K. Hord. And I do believe there tends to be "patterns" in human history, if only because human beings, will behave much the same way thru out history, broadly speaking.
Ad astra! Sean
Hord's theory was itself largely based on Toynbee.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I am willing to agree. With me arguing that Hord refined and improved on Toynbee's thought. And it was that which so impressed Anderson.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, IMH Hord bootjacked the history of other countries to make it conform to a Roman pattern in ways which required a lot of goalpost-shifting.
Eg., Egypt, where political unification was coincided with the birth of the civilization as a whole in the Old Kingdom, and where intervals of disunity were always disasters.
That was a product of Egypt's unique symbiosis with the Nile and its environment -- in ancient Egyptian, "upstream" and "downstream" also meant "South" and "North" -- the closest way you could get to describing the Euphrates was to say it "flowed upstream". And the closest way you could get to saying "rain-fed agriculture" was "a Nile in the sky".f
My own study of history has led me to emphasize the role of contingency. At most, there are recurrent patterns -- history "rhyming" rather than "repeating" -- because of the invariant elements in human nature.
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