Wednesday 27 July 2022

Outer Threats And Inner Conflicts

In Poul Anderson's Satan's World, Technic civilization survives an external threat. In Anderson's Mirkheim, that civilization begins to succumb to its own internal conflicts. In Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy, the Roman Empire recedes, not just because of external threats. In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, we see the Patrol but not Danellian civilization although we are told that that civilization has taken intelligent life:

"'...beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990, p. 435.

- so maybe internal conflicts have been transcended.

But, meanwhile, what is the current state of world civilization?

1 comment:

S.M. Stirling said...

"Things are -always- going to hell," as the old saying has it.

Every age considers its own perils and conflicts to be unique; they -feel- that way, but that's because they're happening to -you-.

There's an old saying that it's a recession when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression when you do -- a related phenomenon.