-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Seventeen, p. 362.
Sf authors consciously write against this cosmic background even if they do not always make it explicit. See "...And Stars As Sand Or Stage" here and "Imaginary Science?" here. CS Lewis' character, Ransom, had problems with cosmic vastness but most of us welcome it. Here is an article on how many galaxies there are.
An Isaac Asimov title is The Stars Like Dust whereas a Brian Aldiss title is Galaxies Like Grains Of Sand! Four sf novels that do show us a multiplicity of galaxies, and not just in their titles, are:
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson;
World Without Stars by Poul Anderson;
The Triumph Of Time by James Blish;
Into Deepest Space by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle.
Let's have more cosmic sf.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I absolutely agree! I would like more SF writers to again write stories set in interplanetary, interstellar, or even wider "cosmic" settings. There's only so much that can be gained from using dystopian themes like alleged "global warming" or "global freezing" (an early and GOOD example of the latter being FALLEN ANGELS, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn).
I don't deny changes in climate happens, but I do deny (as did the late Jerry Pournelle in massively detailed arguments) that we KNOW enough to definitively say if we have a problem. And we know even LESS what to do if there is. Pournelle argued that the question is too important for hysteria and hasty, panicked implementation of ill thought out, costly, and counter productive policies. To say nothing of how Pournelle suspected the motives of many of these global warmists, because their "proposals" favored MORE centralization of power in a bureaucratic state. And I agree with him!
And, we see Poul Anderson using the word "stars" in others of his works than the ones you listed. Such as the relatively early THE ENEMY STARS.
Sean
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