Similar opening lines:
"A man called Geirolf dwelt on the Great Fjord in Raumsdal. His father was Bui Hardhand, who owned a farm inland near the Dofra Fell."
-Poul Anderson, "The Tale of Hauk" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 21-47 AT p. 21.
"There was a man called Kalava, a sea captain of Sirsu."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, II, p. 109.
But where is Sirsu? The difference is that Genesis is set in the future and Part Two is set hundreds of millions of years in the future. However, extinct humanity has been re-created and is living at a pre-technological level. Anderson reflects this by reverting to an earlier style of narration - although the confused reader does not understand what is happening yet.
6 comments:
That's the usual saga opening line.
Kaor, Paul!
I would say, rather, that the human race Gaia brought back from extinction at a high medieval level of technology. In fact, in one sense, higher than ours. These human were experts at genetic manipulation. Including, alas, breeding some humans into becoming mere beasts of burden.
Sean
The human-breeding stuff is rather odd. Humans make terribly uneconomic domestic animals because their digestive system requires high-value foodstuffs. Slaves were traditionally used for things that needed human hands and minds.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Hmmm, or perhaps there were too few animals in the remote future of Earth to use as domesticated animals? If so, I can too easily see some people breeding human beings to become animals. After all, in your THE SUNRISE LANDS, we see the grisly Church Universal and Triumphant beginning to breed some humans to be no better than beasts of burden.
Sean
Yeah, but the CUT (or rather the Powers behind it) wanted to freeze human development.
The "Genesis" future is mentioned as having very abundant and varied animal life -- it's a billion years in the future, and humans have been absent for most of that.
There might not be anything suitable; the animals would probably be post-mammalian, and it takes rather special characteristics to be suitable for domestication.
But that alters if you have a good command of genetics -- even very wild animals like arctic foxes have been bred into domesticated forms.
The other big block to breeding humans is that our generations are so long. It's rare for a human society to maintain the sense of purpose needed for such a project for the time necessary.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I do have some caveats. By the time of Wayfarer's arrival on Earth in GENESIS, the humans brought back from extinction by Gaia had hunted to extinction several kinds of large animals. Moreover, Earth was becoming less and less habitable as the Sun hotter. That would have led to animal life becoming less abundant as species died out which could not adapt to the greater heat.
I do agree that, so far, no humans have YET had the ruthlessness and "sense of purpose" long enough for such a brutal project as turning humans into animals. And I did think of your Draka as one of the exceptions. Mercifully, they are fictional!
Sean
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