Friday 13 June 2014

What Is Disclosed In The Game Of Empire

Here are Diana and Targovi again, the latter disguised as a performing animal to avoid arrest. Summarizing Anderson's descriptions of alien species is one of the things that I do on this blog but had not done it with Tigeries until I thought to comment on a book cover a couple of posts back.

I am rereading Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire, looking out for details which I now realize that I have covered in earlier posts:

physical descriptions of the two colonized planets in the Patrician System, here;
hints about what will happen after the Empire, here and here.

When Flandry counteracted Merseian subversion on Nyanza, he hoped that that oceanic planet, colonized by Africans, would maintain civilization after the fall of Terra. Later, however, Cairncross suppressed a Nyanzan revolt. Magnusson's wife was Nyanzan whereas he was a Krakenite. Diana's mother was from Atheia. It turns out that, after the Fall of the Empire, Kraken gained economic power under Roan Tom and Atheia retained or regained the technological level that had been lost by Terra. Consequently, these two worlds were centrally involved in a new interstellar grouping, the Allied Planets.

They were not "Foundations" planted by Desai, Flandry or anyone else but they were two planets capable of leading a restoration.

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