Mithras has flameflowers and psuedograsses. As always, Anderson expects not grass but some equivalent on another planet.
A human character refers to Painted Jaguar with which I was not familiar.
The native Mithrans, lacking ambition:
"...were nowhere given to exploration or empire building." (p. 55)
I regard exploration as good but empire building as bad but the human character links them together.
Human children have Mithran playmates. We have seen different rational species interacting in this way in other works by Anderson.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Rather, of course, the native Mithrans were not merely shiftless idlers, they were simply different, psychologically, from humans.
Not all empire building has to be bad! A good case could be made that the Empire founded and built by Manuel Argos and successors was an exception. The early Emperors drove out the barbarian invaders and ended the wars and civil war tearing apart Technic civilization. And for centuries the Empire preserved and unified that civilization.
Sean
Post a Comment