Thursday 1 March 2018

"A Wilderness Of Suns..."

See "A Wilderness Of Stars."

When discussing how to track down Snelund's associates:

"McCormac thought of the wilderness of suns and worlds where his life had passed, and said, 'Probably most will succeed in disappearing.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT Chapter Six, p. 422.

"Traffic was sparse, here where the Empire faded away into a wilderness of suns unclaimed and largely unexplored."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 4.

McCormac has worked in the Terran Empire and Snelund's associates will disappear into that Empire whereas the unclaimed suns are outside the Empire. Thus, McCormac and Ridenour do not refer to the same "wilderness of suns." I realized this only when I had tracked down these two passages to quote them together.

1 comment:

S.M. Stirling said...

There's an analogy between the starry wilderness of the Technic series, and earlier ages when Earth was also sparsely populated and relatively easier to disappear into.