Van Rijn was on the mobile floating city of Delfinburg in Satan's World. Now David and Coya are there. The flowers include livewell, presumably imported from Gray/Avalon although the Falkayns have not yet led the colonization of that planet.
As with some other Technic History novels, there is a sense of troubled times and impending danger:
"'But if war does break out -'
"'Why, my citizenship is still Hermetian, not Commonwealth.'" (p. 33)
Even though Earth is united, humanity is not.
The generational chasm between van Rijn and his granddaughter becomes evident again:
"They had both stopped space roving when their Juanita was born, because it meant indefinite absences from Earth. An older, more hedonistic, less settled generation than Coya's had bred enough neurotics that she felt, and made her husband feel, children needed and deserved a solid home. And now she had another on the way." (p. 34)
Juanita's younger brother, Nicholas Falkayn, born in Delfinburg near the end of Mirkheim, will be the father of Nat Falkayn on Avalon in the following instalment, "Wingless," and they are all ancestors of Tabitha Falkayn in The People of the Wind. But these considerations have taken us away from Earth.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It needed the Time of Troubles, beginning about a century after MIRKHEIM, to convince many humans, and non-humans, that a dangerous universe made unity desirable--which was a big reason why the Empire arose and was so willingly accepted.
Ad astra! Sean
Note the differences with the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire was conquered against usually severe opposition... but once it had ruled an area for a couple of generations, there were seldom attempts at breakaway.
Partly this was because, up until the 3rd century crisis, Roman rule meant prosperity, greater trade, and (usually) internal peace. In the still-barbarian lands, everyone took along a spear if they were going to pee behind a bush; by the 2nd century, most cities in the Roman interior didn't have walls, and you seldom saw a man wearing a sword inside their boundaries.
Roman Britannia had more people than England (roughly the same area) was to consistently have until after 1600. There wasn't another city as large as
Rome in Europe until London in the 19th century. The Roman Empire's minimum height for army recruitment was 3 inches taller than the army of Napoleon Bonaparte, which gives you some idea of relative nutritional standards.
And the Empire's elites, and then the common people, became part of a common culture amazingly rapidly. By the time the Empire fell, Latin had replaced local languages everywhere north and west of the Greek-speaking zone -- hence Romania ("Land of the Romans") between the Carpathians and the Black Sea today, where they say "veni" for "come" and "buna" for "good".
You could go from Scotland to Iraq with the same law, the same architecture, the same two dominant languages, people reading the same books and pleading in the same courts and wearing the same clothes (with some allowance for climate) and dining in the same way.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I saw a lot of the things you listed above in your draft book TO TURN THE TIDE! I'm very keen on getting that novel and WARLORD OF THE STEPPES when they come out.
There were crucial differences between the Terran and Roman empires, I agree. Terra had a vastly more advanced technology, with things like FTL and cloning, for example. And I would still argue for the shock of the Time of Troubles being a big reason why the Empire arose and spread its rule so quickly.
Ad astra! Sean
BTW Re: Warlord of the Steppes
I just downloaded a history podcast about "Baron Roman Nikolaus Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg" (I think that's the main character the novel.)
http://historyonfirepodcast.com/episodes/2023/5/8/rerun-episode-59-fear-and-loathing-in-mongolia-part-1
Something to listen to before the novel is available.
Jim; he was crazy. But in a functional way.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It was von Ungern-Sternberg's (and Mongolia's) bad luck that, just as he was consolidating his grip on power, Lenin sent in the Red Army and took over the country.
Ad astra! Sean
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