Stars throng space. They show their colors: Vega blue; Capella golden; Betelgeuse red. We remember Vegans in James Blish's Cities In Flight and Betelgeuseans in Anderson's Technic History. Stars invisible from Earth hide the constellations from untrained eyes.
"The night was wild with suns." (p. 18)
We remember Anderson's phrase, "A wilderness of suns...," see here.
The Milky way belts heaven but we have already quoted this. See The Milky Way Thread. The Magellanic Clouds glow and the Andromeda galaxy gleams. In the Technic History, other galaxies are mere background but Tau Zero will go intergalactic.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have wondered if Nicholas van Rijn, in his extreme old age, might have gone as far as the Magellanic Clouds in his final journey of exploration.
Sean
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is about 163,000 ly from here. At top Technic pseudo- speed of 100 ly/week, it would take ~30 yrs. to get there, and I don't think there's enough fine food and booze in the universe to keep Old Nick comfy that long!
-Keith
In James Blish's CITIES IN FLIGHT, New York flies to the Greater Magellanic and its mayor becomes the Mayor of the whole Cloud.
Paul.
I loved Cities in Flight.
Where're our Bridge on Jupiter, anti-agathics and spindizzies? They were due lat year!
We almost have our McHinery and Erdsenov, though .
IMSM, there was a rather amusing (from our 2019 perspective) scene in TTOT where ca. 4000 CE the City Manager is distressed when the robot busboy throws out his slide rule!
-Keith
Keith,
2018 was a very special year for me because of James Blish whom I corresponded with and met a few times. Comparable to 1984, 2000 and 2001.
Good point about MacHinery and Erdsenov.
"IMSM"?
Paul.
Kaor, Keith!
Darn and drat! I had rather hoped Old Nick could have gone really FAR in his final years. Nicholas van Rijn was 80 in MIRKHEIM, and allowing for taking somewhere between five and ten years to patch up the Polesotechnic League so it would last a while longer, I'm assuming he went on his final journey of exploration around age 90. And Tecnnic antisenescence could preserve a man's health and vigor till about age 100 and 110. So Old Nick could not reach the Magellanic Clouds in whatever span of life he could still reasonably expect. Pity!
Sean
Post a Comment