Back To Starfarers

What prompted me to reread Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years in such depth? However, it was worthwhile. So many details in such a dense text are too easily forgotten, especially when some important information is imparted just once in dialogue. Boat is like a summary of fifty novels. Chapter XIX alone presents:

the technology and economics of the civilization on Earth and in the Solar System;

the eight immortals, now called "Survivors," at last working together as a team;

how their interstellar ramjet works;

their virtual reality experiences;

the inhabited planet that they visit;

the spacefarers with their rendezvous points;

AI's congregating at the mysterious places of the galaxy;

the usual fate of high tech cultures;

the new civilization that the Survivors, helped by the Alloi, will build.

I now return to the interrupted rereading of Starfarers, which also features a small group making an STL interstellar crossing but the two scenarios could not be more different. Starfarers has already given me some idea of how creation works. See also here. The actualization of the potential - we used to discuss this in Hegelian philosophy.