An early passage in Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," presents the Polesotechnic League and thus sets the scene for sixteen of the forty-three instalments of the Technic History. The passage begins:
"It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology."
-Poul Anderson, "Margin of Profit" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 135-172 AT p. 145 -
- and ends:
"Nevertheless, [the League] had its troubles." (p. 146)
The Van Rijn Method is Volume I of Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis. In his Introduction to Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader, Davis informs us that the first story in this volume, "Territory," also about van Rijn, is preceded by an excerpt from "Margin of Profit," namely this same passage introducing the League. Having collected "Margin of Profit" in Volume I, Davis was uncertain whether to include the excerpt in Volume II but nevertheless list four sound reasons why he finally decided to do so. Thus, the League is properly introduced in Volumes I and II whereas Volume III begins with the concluding novel of the League period.
In the original publication order of the Technic History, "Margin of Profit" was included in the later collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, but the opening volume, Trader To The Stars, included "Territory." Thus, again, the League was appropriately introduced at the beginning of the series.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Also, of course, we have two versions of "Margin." Anderson later thought it necessary to revise that story, so it would fit in better with the emerging Technic history.
Ad astra! Sean
It would be more accurate to say that the technology sets the -limits- of what societies can do. You can have very different societies with the same technology, but more tech opens up opportunities.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I think Anderson would agree.
Ad astra! Sean
Eg., I've been reading a lot on ancient Rome.
In many ways Rome during the late Republic and the first two centuries of the Empire was a pinnacle; population, living standards, bulk trade, urbanization and literacy, and some aspects of the economy (per-acre productivity in agriculture, for starters) hit heights that weren't reached again until the modern period.
For example, Cato the Elder wrote a book on agriculture in 160 BCE.
Cato was a notoriously brutal tightwad even by Roman standards; but the rations he outlined for his slaves in his farming manual were 1/3 larger (and gave a more balanced diet) than those that 'free' agricultural laborers in southern Italy got in 1900.
Not at all by coincidence, it wasn't until the 1940's that average Italian heights equalled those of Romans in Augustus Caesar's time.
Yet in other ways Rome was surprisingly primitive.
Example there: my time-travelers are introducing some innovations.
Among them are 1790's style spinning wheels and hand-looms -- this is the peak of hand-made wooden cloth making equipment, just before mechanization. Nothing that any carpenter can't make with a little help from a smith, though -- in 1800 or 1500 or 165 CE.
Those two innovations reduce the labor time needed to make an ordinary wool tunic from 150 hours to about 10-15.
They also introduce the cradle-scythe.
This is another purely "idea" invention; you don't need any new tools or skills to make it, you just need the idea.
The Romans had scythes. The cradle is just four wooden fingers in a frame over the blade; but it lets you cut small grains (wheat, barley) with a scythe instead of a sickle.
(It's an 18th-century American invention.)
But while a good worker with a sickle can cut .25 to .35 of an acre of wheat a day, a man with a cradle scythe can cut 2-3 acres. So you get an 8x increase in productivity.
As an aside, when you're growing small grains like wheat or barley, the harvest is very time-compressed. The time from the grain being ripe enough to cut to the heads 'shattering' and the grain falling out on the ground and being lost is about 2 weeks maximum. You can stretch this a bit by staggering your planting schedule, but not by much.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Fascinating comments! And I love how the innovations you suggested would not be too advanced for the Romans of AD 165 to understand and adopt. Martin Padway, from LEST DARKNESS FALL, would approve!
And what of medical innovations? In 165 the Emperor Marcus Aurelius had two sons: Commodus and Marcus Annius Verus. The latter died in 169 of complications from surgery to remove a tumor near his ear. What if one of your stranded time travelers suggested something that might have saved the boy? The younger Marcus might have been a better Emperor than Commodus.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: ah, thereby hangs a plot point.
Re: idea inventions.
I like the idea of introducing an alphabetic script suitable for marking on clay tablets to Sumeria, a bit before cuneiform is developed.
Also something similar for numbers in positional notation including a zero symbol.
I like this particularly because of an observation in the chapter on writing systems in "Guns, Germs & Steel". This is that the earliest writing systems basicly served the literate classes to make it easier to dominate the rest of society, while the earliest writing in the Greek alphabet announces a dance contest. An easy to learn writing system is why the earliest philosophy & science is mostly Greek.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Meaning you thought of something similar? I anticipate reading your first Antonine book with great eagerness!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Jim!
I disagree with your comments about the cuneiform writing system. First, it is very ancient, developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia by 3200 BC. I think it was the first of all human scripts. And it was supple enough to be used in Akkadian, which succeeded Sumerian.
Secondly, knowledge of cuneiform was not limited to the "literate classes." Many tablets survived in which ordinary people used cuneiform for their letters and business documents.
Thirdly, there were examples of cuneiform literature which touched on "philosophical" topics. Some examples are: "I Will Praise The Lord Of Wisdom," "The Dialogue About Human Misery" (about 1000 BC), and "The Dialogue of Pessimism."
The book you cited was far too dismissive of cuneiform.
Ad astra! Sean
My understanding is the cuneiform literature you mention was *after* over a millennium of refinement of cuneiform. Introducing a fully alphabetic script about 3300 BC would speed the development of civilization a lot.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, there were changes and modifications in cuneiform writing as centuries passed. No argument there. But it survived recognizably cuneiform till it fell completely out of use in the late first century AD.
The villainous William Walker did what you suggested in Achaean Greece in Stirling's Nantucket books.
Ad astra! Sean
It's rather hard for *all* of someone's actions to be bad.
I would consider that to be be one of William Walker's few good actions
Kaor, Jim!
True, introducing the Roman alphabet to the Achaean Greeks of 1250 BC was one of Walker's better deeds. It replaced the clumsy, hard to learn, and unsatisfactory script the Greeks then had.
Ad astra! Sean
The drawbacks of early ideographic and syllabic scripts were not deliberate; they were the result of blind chance.
But they may be -preserved- deliberately. Eg., in classic Egyptian writing, there are phonetic symbols.
In fact, there are 24 of them, and with those you can transcribe any word in ancient Egyptian.
So they'd invented an alphabet by accident!
But it was probably scribal pressure that prevented them from being used that way. Scribes had an investment in the long hard slog of learning to write with hieroglyphs.
NB: the Greeks didn't invent the alphabet, they borrowed it from the Phoenicians, then modified it for an Indo-European as opposed to Semitic language.
kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Oh, certainly! Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics first arose thru trial and error, and blind chance.
But as centuries passed even scribal pressure couldn't prevent Egyptians from developing simpler and more efficient scripts. After the XX Dynasty we see demotic and cursive scripts being used.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, but by then alphabetic scripts had been developed elsewhere in the Middle East.
Incidentally, Egyptian was distantly related to the Semitic languages; it's fairly easy to write in Phoenician script, not requiring as much modification as it does to make it work with Greek.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I had not known, Egyptian being distantly related to the Semitic languages.
And I thought adapted forms of the Greek alphabet played a role in Egyptian developing simpler and more efficient scripts. E.g., Coptic Egyptian.
Ad astra! Sean
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