Identities

Poul Anderson, "Horse Trader," See here.

Our pov character has:

"...the somewhat improbable name of Auchinlek Welcome..." (p. 262)

We keep thinking of "Welcome" as his job description rather than as his name.

He uses futuristic furniture:

"The chair molded itself to his angular contours with a sensuousness..." (p. 265)

He converses and negotiates with extra-solars. However different the body, Anderson usually imagines a recognizable face in front at the top. The popeyed, billed, round-headed Epsilonian speaks English that might have been understood after long practice but also wears a transponder that makes his speech intelligible. When he burbles:

"'That is a scheme of the slyest magnanimity...'" (p. 271)

- Welcome wonders whether "slyest" is innocent or insinuating - or both or neither?

Welcome welcomes extra-solars to Sol. On a recent demonstration outside the British Parliament, someone held up a placard saying, "I Am Not A European." What a deplorable sentiment! Whatever we think of the current European Union, which is only one possible political dispensation in Europe, we are Europeans and Terrestrials and Solarians. Although we inhabit one part of the Eurasian land-mass, the term "Eurasian" would suggest recent common ancestry which not all of us have - but we are all descended from Africans who moved North, changing their pigmentation.

That would be a different way to identify ourselves - not by sun, planet or currently inhabited continent but by continent of origin. We could go out into the galaxy as "Africans."