In "The Alien Enemy," Anderson explicitly builds on the background provided by the earlier story, "Home." There is more than just a reference to the Directorate. As in "Home," large interstellar craft take a year to accelerate to near light speed and a year to decelerate although we now learn that smaller ships can accelerate even faster because they can go above one gravity. The crews of the fleet that visits Sybilla experienced several months while traversing 33.25 light years from the Solar System. They came because the colonists had sent a laser message describing an alien attack on their planet. Are we about to read about an interstellar war?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I assume the smaller ships were used to send survey parties to stars of interest and to study any planets found there. Hopefully, some of those would be colonizable.
Not only is the Directorate referred to, we meet one of the Directors themselves!
And one of the other two stories I suggested as being appropriate to place with the Directorate series is relevant to the idea of STL interstellar war.
Sean
Sean,
Smaller ships survey parties good thinking.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And these smaller ships probably have smaller crews, but also still large enough to include some of the specialists needed for studying these planets and systems. Probably no more than 20, with some of them being in cold sleep as well.
Sean
Post a Comment