Casiru tells Josserek that:
"'Men built Arvennath before the Ice came.'" (p. 45);
in those days, they could fly;
according to myth, they also went to the moon;
maybe this was ten thousand years ago;
because of the city's great age, time-hallowed Arvannethan usages "'...have prevailed for uncounted centuries.'" (ibid.), even in the Lairs;
his own Rattlebone Brotherhood was founded during the Ayan Imperium in Rahid;
the city and the Brotherhood outlast civilizations;
the Brotherhood guards its secrets from strangers like Josserek.
According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, the concluding installment of the Technic History, "Starfog," is set in 7100 but this can only be a guesstimate because no dates are stated in this or earlier installments. I mention this only to compare the timescales of two fictional futures. There is no indication that they are the same future. If they were, then the Ice Age would have to start some time after the lifetime of Dominic Flandry.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Some readers might be tempted to shoehorn THE WINTER OF THE WORLD into the remote future of the same timeline as that of the Technic Civilization stories. But we have no evidence of that being the case in either WINTER or any Technic stories. So it's better to think of WINTER as being a standalone work.
Casiru's mention of how it was "thought" men had once flown and even gone to the Moon maybe ten thousand years ago was meant by Anderson to indicate how much time had passed. And to allow time for an Ice Age to wreak its havoc.
Even if people had forgotten how to use powered flight, I did wonder why no mention was made of ballooning. I don't think hot air balloons were beyond the abilities of the most advanced nations seen in WINTER, not if steam powered ships had been reinvented!
Ancient, time hallowed usages, such as those of Arvanneth, can be good, but not always. It can lead to an institutionalized tolerance of bad things, such as the criminal Rattlebone Brotherhood of which Casiru was one of the leaders. Btw, even some of the leaders of the deposed theocracy formerly ruling Arvanneth were pleased by how the Rahidian/Barommian authorities had been cracking down on these institutionalized gangs. Some of those time hallowed usages had prevented the Councilors from policing crime as strictly as they would have liked.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Another thought I forgot to add was that if THE WINTER OF THE WORLD was set set in the future of the Technic Civilization, there should have been plenty of EVIDENCE of all kinds for that, Ice Age or no Ice Age. Even allowing for ten thousand years, I don't think the evidence for a vast interstellar civilization and Empire could so completely disappear. There would have been records of all kinds and vast ruins. But that is not the case in WINTER, so I concluded the Ice Age began BEFORE men could reach the stars.
Sean
Sean:
While I don't, in fact, disagree with your conclusion about TWOTW not being part of the Technic History, I have to point out that if the fall of the Terran Empire included Earth getting severely bombarded, this would likely erase an awful lot of the "vast ruins" and the records kept within them. Plus, a resulting nuclear winter could've initiated an Ice Age.
I don't, though, think TWOTW IS post-Technic. I feel someone would've come from one or more of the colony worlds (if not from an alien people) to at least loot the ruins of Holy Mother Terra.
Kaor, DAVID!
Many thanks for your interesting comments! You made points I have to agree with. After all, we do see Flandry anxiously reflecting on how bombs would some day rain down on Admiralty Center (and other parts of Terra) in WE CLAIM THESE STARS (Chapter VI, I think). Yes, such devastation would destroy many records and make many ruins "indecipherable." And a nuclear winter could have brought on an Ice Age.
Holy Mother Terra being plundered or looted after the Empire fell? An all too plausible scenario! We see mention in Chapter 22 of Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE of people coming from other planets to obtain metals from the ruins of Trantor (probably by both bare faced theft and honest purchase).
Agree, TWOTW is best understood as a stand alone novel, not a post Technic story.
Sean
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