An Imbalance

Although some science fiction is set in periods when human beings have colonized many extra-solar planets, the narrative often focuses on that small percentage of the population that spends its time traveling between planetary systems, e.g.:

Star Trek
James Blish's Okie series
Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League, Dominic Flandry and Kith series

Anderson's "The Ancient Gods"/World Without Stars goes further by implying that most people live in space. The immediate protagonists of the novel are interstellar and even intergalactic explorers and traders. That does not surprise us. However, what of the more sedentary masses?

We are told that some people colonize planets because they want:

"...nature and elbow room."
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (Ace Books, New York, 1966), II, p. 7.

However, the narrator, Captain Felipe Argens, adds that:

"There is no other good reason for planting yourself at the bottom of a gravity well." (ibid.)

So where do most people live? Argens explains that "...most of us..." can be satisfied:

"...with an occasional groundside visit somewhere, or just with a multisense tape..." (ibid.)

That clearly implies that not only the explorers and traders but also most people spend the bulk of their lives inside entirely manmade environments like spaceships, space stations, artificial satellites, self-sufficient space habitats, asteroidal bases, hollowed out moons etc, like Larry Niven's Belters or Anderson's Lunarians, the latter bred to live in Lunar gravity but not to walk unprotected on the Lunar surface.

In the concluding Chapter XVII, we are informed that, on Earth:

"...the educational centers are bright with youth from every part of the galaxy." (p. 120)

We imagine that these youths come from other planets but must remember what we were told in Chapter II.

Argens supposes that an occasional gene complex:

"...makes the owner want to belong to a specific patch of earth." (p. 7)

Then, a number of similarly inclined individuals find and claim an uninhabited but inhabitable planet. Such planets are rare but there are many in the universe. Argens says the universe, not the galaxy. This civilization has instantaneous intergalactic travel. Maybe breeding reinforces the instinct or maybe the original settlers "...remain culturally dominant over the centuries..." (p. 7)  (This human race dies only from (rare) accident or violence.) Thus, succeeding generations spread across a planet and, in the case of Landomar, do not "...want outsiders building a starport..." (p. 7), which is why City is a satellite that has grown for centuries.

Thus, City is one of the many space habitats that we have hypothesized although we have also been told that the starport would have been built on Landomar if not for the inhabitants' objections. This civilization has many curious aspects to be discussed in further posts.