The Enemy Stars

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars.

This novel is set three hundred years after the discovery of quantum mechanics and over two hundred years after the beginning of space travel. There are slower than light spaceships but there is also instantaneous interstellar teleportation. In the Outer Hebrides, a stone cottage is little changed after several centuries.

There are ten billion people on Earth but several sparsely populated extrasolar colonies are ruled by the Terrestrial Protectorate. Terrestrial society is divided into "technics" and "commons." The richest technics do not work and some are uninterested in the classics, Confucius, Plato and Einsten - a class preparing itself to be consigned to the dustbin of history. A common can become a technic by marriage but David Ryerson marries a high-class common and plans to gain technic rank on his merits.

There is much more than this in the novel and more will be posted when time permits.