Fenn

Before rereading Poul Anderson's "Harvest Of Stars" Tetralogy, I counted the pages to be read and noticed that Volume IV, The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997), ends with "(Chapter) 32: FENN WOKE." (p. 403)

At that time, I had no memory of who Fenn was. Now, I have reread to Chapter 2 which introduces this character. Chapter 2 ends "Fenn raged." (p. 24) We are back in the Solar System with the cybercosm subtly limiting human freedom and ending space travel. Fenn is one of the few for whom this is intolerable.

The reader wants not to rage with Fenn but to soar with Fenn's hero, Anson Guthrie. Chapter 1 describes incarnate Guthrie on Amaterasu, a colonized planet of Beta Hydri. Chapter 3 describes download Guthrie visiting the Lunarians in their orbiting stronghold of Zamok Sabely' at Alpha Centauri A. I would have welcomed one long novel in which Guthrie fared between stars and did not have to return to Sol to counteract an attempted deception by the cybercosm. Here, the cybercosm is not merely suppressing information, although that was bad enough, but is actively trying to mislead on a massive scale. Whatever the ultimate issues, the cybercosm puts itself outside the bounds of civilized, moral discourse by lying instead of engaging in dialogue.

But what I really want to see is Guthrie leading the colonization of the next planet after Amaterasu. Unfortunately, we would need downloaded or re-incarnated Anderson to write about it for us.