On Merseia:
"High overhead wheeled a fangryf, hunting, and the light burned gold off its feathers."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 22.
And on Unan Besar:
"High overhead, a bird of prey soared among the last ragged mists. Sunlight struck its wings and made them gold."
-Poul Anderson, "The Plague of Masters" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-147 AT VIII, p. 70.
So how many gold-winged birds of prey are there? I don't know but sometimes one passage resonates with another, as here.
In "Hunters of the Sky Cave," the omniscient narrator informs the reader that:
interstellar domains have indefinite borders;
stars, of intermingled types, are many although scattered thinly;
the Terrestrial Empire is a sphere 400 light-years in diameter containing four million stars;
less than half have been visited;
a few hundred thousand might have slight contact with the Empire;
only one hundred thousand have regular contact;
many planetary systems are unusable or uninhabitable;
the Empire is tenuous -
"And its inconceivable extent is still the merest speck on an outlying part of one spiral arm of one galaxy; among a hundred billion or more great suns, those known to any single world are the barest, tiniest handful."
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Sir Dominic Flandry..., pp. 149-301 AT III, p. 170.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Again, we see one of Anderson's leitmotifs, these anxious about how small and insignificant the Terran Empire was. However often we see comments like these in the stories featuring the Empire, I've found them often among the most elegiac and poignant texts written by Anderson
And I've wondered exactly how and in what form these "single contacts" by some planets of the Empire would take with the Imperium. And can you affirm allegiance to a state if you saw its officials once? A few multiples of 100,000 planets are staid to have contacted often enough to give it nominal allegiance. But "only" 100,planets worlds have given not only formal allegiance but have regular, frequent contacts with the Empire and other Imperial worlds. Some pay modest taxes but others were only asked to contribute fixed, stated amounts of resources or labor if the Empire ever had need of them.
In return, these worlds received peace and the wealth gained by peace, such as by trade. Plus contact with Terra and the other Imperial worlds. Such as by travelers, people signing up to be crew on civilian ships, or enlisting in the armed forces. With all the direct and indirect consequences that means.
Sean
"less than half have been visited"
Does that really make sense?
Given the hyperdrive wouldn't it be easy for a Grand Survey to check each star for a planet with life or something else of unusual interest?
Actually given space telescopes somewhat better than the current best, we should know about planets above size X orbiting every star within distance Y within a century. No hyperdrive needed, except to visit them.
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, but the Technic FTL hyperdrive still needed days or weeks for a ship to travel to any particular star/world. I think it makes sense to believe explorers will pass over solar systems not believed to be of immediate interest/profit. Because, given millions of stars, I don't think all are likely to be visited.
Ad astra! Sean
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