Dominic Flandry was a series character;
the Merseians existed in van Rijn's period;
the Buddha was not a strange god but a compassionate man;
the Norse gods will die;
the founding of Rome connected back to the siege of Troy;
astronauts, robots and aliens existed not only in comic strips but also in novels addressed to adults;
Heinlein's Orphans Of The Sky was set inside an entirely artificial environment;
also, Orphans... was Volume V of the "Future History";
the future moves, i.e., the opening installment of the Future History was set in 1952;
space travel was beginning.
I did not yet suspect how many of these turning points would impact on the works of Poul Anderson or, of course, that, in the twenty first century - the science fictional future -, I would regularly discuss Anderson's works on a worldwide computer network.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I should assume Heinlein's ORPHANS OF THE SKY described something very like an O'Neill habitat?
Sean
Sean,
It was the first "generation ship" and just described as a big spaceship. I don't think there was much info about its life support system.
Paul.
Paul and Sean:
It was made fairly clear that the Ship was cylindrical and rotating for artificial gravity, so, yes, shaped more-or-less like an O'Neill Colony. Or like Clarke's *Rama*.
I particularly recall thinking for a time that Heinlein had got something wrong, because it seemed to be implied that mutants were more prevalent in the lower-gravity areas — i.e., toward the center of the Ship — and I thought the mutations must be caused by cosmic rays, so they should've happened more often in the outer, full-gravity areas. Only much later did I realize that mutants born in full gravity FLED into "no-weight." I was foolish not to realize sooner that Heinlein WASN'T foolish.
Kaor, Paul and DAVID!
Paul, I'll have to check my piles of SF books to see if I have that RAH book.
David: aha, RAH was being prescient, he did described something like an O'Neill habitat. ORPHANS OF THE SKY was written before Heinlein started writing his awful, later books.
Sean
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