Tuesday 2 October 2018

The Lahui Kuikawa

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 5.

Human global society is differentiated into an "Orthosphere" (p. 73) and a "Heterosphere" (p. 74), which sounds like the terminology in The Byworlder.

The Heterosphere includes a two-species society like the human-Avalonian enclave on Avalon in Anderson's Technic History:

"The Lahui Kuikawa amounted to about ten thousand humans on a small Hawaiian island and maybe fifty thousand Keiki Moana, maybe considerably more, prowling the greatest of the oceans." (p. 72)

Human beings and intelligent seals cooperated on labor-intensive work in:

fish ranches;
dolphin domestication;
aquaculture;
recreational enterprises;
scientific surveys;
salvage and repair.

However, cheap robotization replaced living labor while the Keiki population grew, leading to poverty, hunting and banditry, like theft from farms. A woman of the Lahui tries to mediate between the human authorities and the "kauwa," outcasts, exiles, bandits.

Poul Anderson shows how technological progress generates new social dislocations and conflicts.

Addendum: Aleka of the Lahui Kuikawa swears by "Pele." (p. 73)

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And the very idea of there being intelligent seals with human level brains (and other "upraised" animals like them) was one of the strange concepts in the HARVEST OF STARS which I had trouble grokking! I had to read the books a second time before things went "click" and every thing finally fell into place for me.

Sean