On Earth, Sandra sees:
huge megalopolitan integrates;
"...some of the remaining natural marvels..." (how many remain?), including the Grand Canyon and Lake Baikal (see image). (It looks like a sea but it is a lake.)
Earth in the Solar Commonwealth is midway between Earth of the early twenty first century before the Chaos and the fully urbanized Earth of the Terran Empire. See:
"Archopolis And Earth In Flandry's Time II," here;
"Dayan And Terra," here.
We are not shown Earth after the Empire although Dominic Flandry imagines:
bombs roaring out of space;
barbarians howling among smashed buildings;
smoke from burning books;
dead men in tattered bright uniforms.
Some of those howling barbarians (as he sees them) might be the people of Earth rebuilding their societies on a simpler and stabler basis?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think you erred here: "Earth in the Solar Commonwealth is midway between Earth of the early twenty first century before the Chaos and the fully urbanized Earth of the Terran Empire." I have argued in other comments that the Chaos began in 1914 with the Sarajevo Assassination and continued into OUR times, the early 21st century. And the Chaos only ended when the Commonwealth was slowly and grudgingly set up later on in this century.
I have also argued, based on what was said about Zolotoy in "The High Ones," that I don't think Early was totally urbanized. Probably about 25 percent. My view is that both the Commonwealth and the Empire would have encouraged, perhaps REQUIRED, that wide regions would not be urbanized. For both ecological and practical reasons. Some Imperial nobles are mentioned as having huge unurbanized estates, probably on the condition that they stayed that way.
In Chapter 22 of FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, Asimov gives us an unusually elegiac and melancholy glimpse of the ruins of Old Trantor after the Great Sack. I fear we have to expect something as grim as that for Terra when the Empire finally fell. Including, yes, howling barbarians, both human and non human. And it's more likely that some descendants of those barbarians again rebuilt a civilized interstellar civilization.
Sean
Sean,
I remember previous discussion of the Chaos and I agree that Earth has been chaotic at least since 1914. I used the term in the more specific sense presented by Minamoto in "The Saturn Game."
By a fully urbanized Earth, I mean one where a single city stretches around the Earth but not one where that city covers every square inch of the surface.
Paul.
Sean,
Agreed about urbanization. Parks, e.g., in London and New York, have to be regarded as parts of the city. They are different from countryside between cities.
Minamoto says that the Chaos ended passive entertainment like television.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I think we agree that there were still regions of Earth during the Commonwealth and the Empire properly described as "countryside." I think the Imperium would have wanted Terra to avoid being completely dependent on imported or synthesized foods.
Human beings what they are, I would not be surprised if passive forms of entertainment again came back! We are not all going to be poets, philosophers, literary critics, or even chess players.
Sean
Sean,
Minamoto was contrasting inactive entertainment with psychodrama.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
What we saw in "The Saturn Game" was certainly active, in a very dangerous way!
Sean
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