The Polesotechnic League series mainly expresses the views of those who want to get out into space more than anything else. Entire species feel held back by their inability to afford off-planet training and careers for their more gifted members. Coya Conyon provides a welcome contrast. She is content to work as an astrophysicist at Luna Astrocenter and to see other planets as a tourist. Granted that Luna is off Earth but only just! Most Anderson characters would not be content with that in an era of faster than light interstellar travel. "The stars" attract them.
Coya joins the trader team when she marries David but stops, and persuades him to stop, a mere five years later when she starts a family. Unlike an earlier "...less settled generation..." (p. 34), Coya regards a stable Terrestrial home for her children as more important than roaming around in space. This is, effectively, a comment on her grandfather who had never married and had at least two children by different women.
3 comments:
"Coya regards a stable Terrestrial home for her children as more important than roaming around in space."
Anderson does show in other stories a middle way. Whole families on spaceships like the Kith. Similarly, over the next few centuries, it might be common for people to live on rotating space habitats which can be moved about the solar system. Might some people spend most of their lives on Aldrin cyclers?
There might be no distinction between 'settled' & 'nomadic'.
Kaor, Jim!
Except the Kith way of life made sense only if STL, not FTL technology was used. With STL, it was possible to have stable, long lasting families "roaming around in space." Not practical if FTL is available.
I agree O'Neill habitats and vast, rotating space habitats could become homes for families.
Ad astra! Sean
IIRC the Nomads in some of the later stories of the Psychotechnic series raised families in FTL spaceships.
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