Referring to oppressive Terrestrial rulers, a Kithman says:
"'Greatmen, vicars, I'll outlive the bastards.'" (10, p. 84)
Hearing children playing in Kith Town, Kenri reflects:
"Some of those children were born a hundred or more years ago and had looked upon worlds whose suns were faint stars in this sky." (21, p. 173)
We really need a novel that shows a starfaring character periodically returning to an ever-changing Earth during several slower-than-light circuits of colonized planetary systems. Such a novel could have been set in Larry Niven's Leshy Circuit.
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is perhaps the nearest approach to what I am talking about. However, in that novel, Terrestrial civilization becomes uniform very quickly. Poul Anderson conveys a sense of more complex historical processes.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While I like your idea, I would have settled for more frequent and EXTENSIVE glimpses of Earth during the 11,000 years "Envoy" was away. But that might have necessitated turning STARFARERS into a two volume series.
Ad astra! Sean
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