"POUL ANDERSON TAKES YOU THERE!" -Philip Jose Farmer
-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), front cover.
Two sf premises that have become cliches:
routine faster than light (FTL) interstellar travel;
many easily colonized extra-solar planets.
Although colonizable planets have become less implausible, FTL remains theoretically impossible. However, let us consider their implications as fictional premises.
First, regular FTL travel would be a scientific achievement that would strengthen a scientific world view. Secondly, however, most extra-solar colonists would not be scientists. We must imagine entire planetary populations living and working in new environments. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, several groups leave Earth to preserve inherited ways of life. For example, Judaism is preserved on Dayan and Orthochristianity on Dennitza. However, many planets would be colonized by groups not united by any traditional monotheism. Such a group would face:
perhaps a long journey through interstellar space;
the challenges of settling into a new environment;
encounters with alien cultures.
Would some colonists respond to such alienating experiences by rediscovering or reinventing polytheism? Why do James Blish's Okies swear by "gods of all stars?" In Anderson's After Doomsday, when many spacefaring species interact, a ballad in an interstellar language includes the line:
"(A bugle: the gods defied!)"
-see here.
In the Technic History, on the colonized planet of Imhotep, Diana Crowfeather keeps her few possessions in a ruined temple and earlier, on Unan Besar, the Square of the Four Gods had a statue of a dancing, multi-armed male figure in each corner.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
First, I have to disagree with you that FTL travel is theoretically impossible. I only need to point out the Alcubierre FTL space warp drive as one example of a real world theoretical discussion of how FTL might be possible. It's the ENGINEERING part, turning theory into a practical reality, which is the hard part. And I hope something like the Alcubierre space warp drive will someday be made real!
Also, Anderson argued in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? and "Delenda Est" that an important reason why a true science arose on Earth was because of orthodox Christianity's belief in the lawfulness of God. So I don't think FTL and the colonization of other worlds would somehow challenge Christianity. True, that might bother some strains of "evangelical" Protestantism.
I don't think all the planets colonized in the Technic stories had founders whose founders were motivated by a faith. Esperance seems to have been settled by a more secular minded group. As was Hermes, originally settled by various commercial/mercantile organizations. But neither were hostile to religious believers.
I suggested in another combox that Blish had his Okies swearing by the "gods of all stars" simply because that was analogous to some Victorian/Edwardian Englishmen exclaiming "By Jove!" Iow, I don't think we should read too much into that.
In Anderson's non-Technic "History of Rustum" stories, the planet Rustum was colonized by people strongly opposed to a World Federation they considered oppressive. They were motivated by a deeply held philosophy, Constitutionalism. But even they were joined by some religious believers, such as Joshua Coffin, who seems to have been an old style New England Calvinist.
And having that line about the "gods defied" in Anderson's poem "The Battle of Brandobar" struck me as merely an artistic convention. A simple kenning.
That mention of a ruined temple on Imhotep simply means there was once enough polytheists in Olga's Landing to support a temple. And we don't know what kind of pagans they were.
Sandra Miesel thought it was a mistake for Anderson to show the people of Unan Besar as some kind of Hindu derived polytheists. Her view was that they should have been Malay/Indonesian descended Muslims. I disagreed and argued that the invention of the FTL hyperdrive and the resulting Breakup enabled those Malays/Indonesians who still resented the forcing of Islam on them to shake it off. Not necessarily all at once. That mention of the war with or by New Djawa in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS might have been what allowed the people who colonized Unan Besar to return to Hinduism, or a variant thereof.
S.M. Stirling basically agreed. I recall him commenting on how Islam is only a thin overlay in some parts of Indonesia, such as Bali. So it's plausible to think that, given the opportunity, some parts of Indonesia might throw off Islam.
Ad astra! Sean
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