-Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 541-660, AT INTRODUCTION, pp. 543-544.
Remarks:
for two pages, the author has stepped outside his narratives and directly addresses his readers without the intermediaries of fictional characters;
he repeats the theme of a "tiny fraction of the galaxy";
his reference to Romano-Britons recalls the opening installment of his Time Patrol series and the concluding volume of his and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys.
Thus, we momentarily step out of the Technic History and look across the timelines into two other historically based series.
Finally, of course, the end of Technic civilization is a number of new beginnings.
See also The Introductions.
3 comments:
There's a difference between contact and contact intense enough to have social/cultural consequences.
Europe isn't that big a place; you can walk from England to Greece in a couple of months or less. People still did that after Rome fell; but not nearly so many. Romano-Britons (or proto-Welsh) remained vaguely aware of what was going on elsewhere in Europe, but it wasn't immediately relevant to their lives the way it had been to their ancestors.
People in, say, 180 CE had found it worthwhile to ship fish sauce and building stone and pottery all the way from Syria to Britain, and other things back the other way; and literate citizens in Britannia could share a cultural and educational experience and career aspirations with people on the Danube or in Africa. Those places were real to them.
Four hundred years later, a trickle of things like jewels or spices were all that moved along those lines; you get bitumen in a grave like Sutton Hoo, but that was what a line of kings sent to the afterlife with their fathers.
It's significant that much of the cross-continental contacts were maintained by the Church, which was the only institution which preserved the breadth of engagement that had characterized the high Imperial period.
Poul dealt with several alternative histories in which Christianity didn't dominate Late Roman culture, and so the post-Roman dark age was much worse ("In the House of Sorrows", for instance); I think that's a credible development.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Very interesting comments! You drew out more clearly what I had somewhat vaguely in mind. That is, my thought was that the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who started taking over the former Roman provinces in Britannia were pushing the Romano-Britons into remoter parts like Wales and Cornwall. These developments too would isolate them even more from their former compatriots of the fallen Empire.
Besides "The House of Sorrows" I would suggest as well "Eutopia" as also showing us several possible world lines where Christianity did not come to exist. The story shows us one truly revolting alternate timeline, btw. And, of course, there is
"Delenda Est," showing us a timeline where Carthage, not Rome, won the Punic (or Roman) Wars.
Sean
Mr Stirling,
Thank you for these and many other comments. There is far more in Poul Anderson's texts than I realize.
Paul.
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