Legends II

See:

Legends

The Black Planet

The Black Planet II

An entire volume of any future history series could be given over not to fictional historical events but to legends generated by those events but future historians do not go down this route. We are looking at legends in future histories in order to compare them with Poul Anderson's treatment of this theme in his Technic History.

There is a story of a Wandering Londoner in Isaac Asimov's The Caves Of Steel. The Dune Encyclopedia recounts apocryphal stories of Muad Dib's childhood on Arrakis. On Larry Niven's Ringworld, orbiting shadow panels periodically block the sun, generating artificial night. Then the Ring appears overhead as an Arch. A hero sets off to walk to the foot of the Arch. He will never reach it - but he could do so in a Ringworld myth or legend.

In James Blish's Cities In Flight:

The Lost City

One early flying city got lost but found a perfect Earth-like planet with a grain containing an all-in-one anti-death drug that can be eaten in the daily bread. The city now tours space, taking the passengers from Okie cities and transporting them to the idyllic planet.

The Vegan Orbital Fort

Cities In Flight is notorious for its internal inconsistencies. In Volume II, A Life For The Stars, a legend states that the escaped Vegan orbital fort forages through space, devouring Okie cities, whereas, in Volume III, Earthman, Come Home, John Amalfi, Mayor of New York, wonders if he:

"...would see at last with his own eyes the mythical Vegan orbital fort - the sole non-human construction ever to go Okie, and now the center of an enormous saga of exploits woven about it by the starmen. Amalfi was as fascinated by the legend as any other Okie..."

-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER FIVE, p. 359.

But what is this legend?

"The fort was now said to be invulnerable and unlimited; it had done miracles in every limb of the galaxy; it was everywhere and nowhere; it was the Okies' Beowulf, their Cid, their Sigurd, Gawaine, Roland, Cuchulainn, Prometheus, Lemminkainen..." (op. cit., pp. 359-360)

But it began as an enemy of Earth and devoured Okie cities according to the legend summarized in Volume II. However, despite these problems, I think that I have shown that Blish wrote good legends of space. His Okies also refer to "gods of all stars."

(Sometimes the last item in a list like that is an imaginary future one but "Lemminkainen" is Finnish.)