Autobiographies

An autobiography of someone who lived sufficiently long ago or far away reads like an sf account of life on another planet. I felt this when reading about Nelson Mandela and again now when reading about Leon Trotsky. The latter's upbringing on a Russian farm seems bizarre.

This makes me want to read autobiographies of Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn growing up on Avalon, a Falkayn on Hermes and a Vymezal on Dennitza. Ivar Frederiksen's early life, which explains why he briefly became the leader of the anti-Terran resistance movement on Aeneas, is summarized all too briefly in The Day Of Their Return as I discovered when I further summarized it for this blog. The full story of Ivar's formative years would easily fill another volume.

Poul Anderson's Technic History is long and detailed enough to show us that, like Tolkien's Middle Earth, it could have been extended indefinitely.