Thursday, 7 May 2020

Names In The Psychotechnic History

Starting to reread Poul Anderson's "Star Ship" while looking for any internal evidence that this story belongs in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, we find some such evidence in the second sentence, the positioning of a surname before a given name:

"...Dougald Anson..."
-Poul Anderson, "Star Ship" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 273-306 AT p. 273.

Others follow:

Masefield Ellen
Chiang Chung-Chen
Du-Frere Marie
Gonzales Alonzo
Dougald Joan
Masefield Philip

- but I think that that is the only connection with the History. (Later: swearing by Cosmos is one more connection.) Anson calls the human language "Terrestrial," (p. 273) not "Basic," but that is not significant either way. The few human beings have been stranded on the planet Khazak for two generations so their language will probably be named after their planet rather than given a more specific name.

I will continue to reread the story in search of any details that might definitely put it outside the Psychotechnic History.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

In Chinese, at least, the custom is to put the surname before the given name. So "Chiang Chung-Chen" is correct.

And "Dougald ANSON" brings to mind Robert Heinlein's middle name of "Anson." To say nothing of the Anson Guthrie we know so well from Anderson's HARVEST OF STARS books.

Ad astra! Sean