Fashions II

See here.

"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."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 34.

(The next installment of the Technic History is a short story about that second child's son.)

Is that older, more hedonistic, generation the one before Coya's or the one before that? Does Coya reflect that too many of her contemporaries are neurotics or that too many of her parents' generation were? Either way, we see social change in the Technic History.

Coya prays:

"Please, God of my grandfather Whom I don't believe in..."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 666.

-or is it a prayer if there is no belief? I would say so. I suggest that at least some deities would heed even agnostic invocations. I say, "To Whom it may concern, to whatever gods may be..." although I cannot practice the prayer of the monotheist faiths.

In recent history, we have been used to children or grandchildren not accepting the beliefs of their elders and Coya's remark sounds like more of the same but remember that she is living in the twenty fifth century. Many fashions will have come and gone. She and her grandfather differ on this question but that does not tell us anything about their respective generations as such. However, we do feel that we get a good sense of changing social mores in that future century.