"...after five thousand trouble-filled years..." (p. 728)
"Evolution galloped. Population exploded. In one or two millennia, man was at home on Kirkasant. In five, he crowded it and went looking for new planets." (p. 730)
Laure conflates the beginning of interstellar travel with the colonization of Kirkasant although there was nearly a millennium between them but that is what people tend to do with long ago events.
There can be no precise dating of "Starfog."
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, there can be no precise dating for "Starfog." Sandra Miesel's proposed dating of that story to AD 7100 at least fits the rather vague parameters given.
Sean
People tend to forget that a century was just as long if it occurred a thousand years ago. It's sort of a foreshortening effect.
We talk of the "medieval period", but that's over seven hundred years.
Alfred the Great in 800 CE and Cosimo de Medici in 1400 are both "medieval".
Alfred was worrying about fighting pagan Vikings and re-establishing basic literacy.
Cosimo was the patron of Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Donatello and Brunelleschi (who built the Duomo), overseeing some of the greatest art the human race ever created.
A century ago my grandfather was convalescing after being gassed at Passchendaele and meeting my grandmother the VAD nurse.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Again, I agree. Circa AD 880, King Alfred was living amidst some of the darkest years of European history, the collapse of the Carolingian Empire ushered in a new age of renewed barbarian invasions from the north (the Vikings) and the east (nomadic tribes galloping in to carve out new kingdoms like Hungary). King Alfred was desperately struggling for bare survival in Wessex. More than 500 years later Cosimo d'Medici lived in VERY different times, in both Italy and Europe as a whole. The 1400's saw Europe beginning its rise to domination of most of the world.
I have heard of Cosimo d'Medici, the founder of the fortunes of the family which played such a major role in Renaissance Florence and Italy.
Sean
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