Thursday, 18 August 2022

Invaders And Reavers

The interstellar Time of Troubles affected many widely separated extrasolar planets similarly.

On Aeneas, heroes "...of the early days..." include:

"...Brian McCormac who cast out the nonhuman invaders and whose statue stood ever afterward on a high pillar near the main campus of the University."
-Poul Anderson, The Day of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 4, p. 103.

On Dennitza, "...the olden heroes..." include:

"...Stefan Miyatovich...who in the depths of the Night Years cast back the reavers from our very homes."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT p. 342.

The Troubles are called the Night Years on Dennitza whereas the phrase, "the Long Night," is reserved for the period still to come after the Fall of the Terran Empire.

Both Aeneas and Dennitza retain military traditions from the Troubles which, in both cases, cause friction with the Empire. 

1 comment:

Jim Baerg said...

There is a significant difference between the Roman & the Terran Empire.
In the Roman Empire Rome was thought of as eternal, that it could not possibly fall. Toynbee notes that the in 'Universal State' of each civilization it is thought of as eternal even when it should be obvious that it is collapsing.
In the Terran Empire & contemporary society few people fail to recognize the *possibility* of the society falling apart, likely because we know the history of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" as Gibbon titled his work on that process.
Thus people in the Terran Empire refer to the Long Night as at least a possible future.