"...at high prices to the human renegades and rebels."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 333.
In fact, they are "...the luxury trade..." (ibid.).
Poul Anderson really was able to rationalize every cliche and absurdity of pulp magazine covers. Apart from women as such, human beings with qualifications like a degree in nuclear engineering are valued by aliens who have acquired space technology and weaponry without understanding them whereas untrained human beings merely do jobs that should be automated and do not last ten years, being easily replaced.
Why do some of us like fiction that combines futuristic technology and extraterrestrial environments with past social relationships like feudalism, imperialism and slavery? Whatever the reason, Poul Anderson knew how to make it work. Slavery appears twice in his History of Technic Civilization. When the Empire has expelled the barbarians, it reintroduces slavery as one part of its penal system.
I value Poul Anderson's works because he excels not only at this kind of space opera but also at serious speculative sf and sometimes even combines them.
"...Rome has been much abused. Lay off Rome for a while. And give me no spaceships in feudal settings...unless, of course, you are Poul Anderson, but you are most likely not."
-Greg Bear, "Tomorrow Through The Past" IN SFWA Bulletin, Fall 1979.
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Interesting blog piece, but I have no time just now to adequately comment on it. Later, after I come back home from work!
Sean
Hi, Paul!
I do not agree that what you called "past social relationships like feudalism, imperialism and slavery" are necessarily always and permanently "past." I only need to cite instances such as Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the existence of slavey in some Muslim countries to show how it is premature to dismiss imperalism and slavery as "past."
And, recally my essay "Crime and Punishment in the Terran Empire," where I quoted from a letter of Poul Anderson his suggestion that libertarianism, of all things, could itself be a cause of bringing back slavery. If so, then the slavery we see in the Terran Empire, limited as a punishment for crime, had its origins in the Solar Commonwealth.
And feudalism might well come again if times of chaos cause many nations to collapse. This anarchy would naturally encourage the rise of local strong men who could restore some kind of order and stability. We see that in "No Truce With Kings."
Sean
Sean,
Agreed. The past can return.
Paul.
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