Wednesday 5 December 2018

Lunarians In The Belt

Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire, Chapter 7.

"[Juno] was among the few [asteroids] where some Lunarians lived, remnants of colonies formerly spread throughout the Belt, though today it was mainly a robotic control station and supply depot for what rare spacecraft still plied those lanes." (p. 124)

Did we realize this? Somewhere between volumes, the Lunarians, like the asterites in Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains and the Belters in Larry Niven's Known Space future history, had colonized the whole Asteroid Belt but Federation attitudes and policies have ended all this and driven the Lunarians into the Kuiper Belt. Anderson writes his future history towards an eventual culminating resumption of space travel but we have to read about all the deadly centuries of basically anti-human policies. Anderson championed freedom and knew the strength of its opponents.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And in this case the opponents of human freedom were the sophotects: subtle, patient, capable of planning centuries ahead.

Sean