Curdled Silver II

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The colonized planet, Ansa, is fifty light years from Sol. The Imperial ship, Ganymede, departs from Ansa in the opposite direction toward:

"...Sagittari, Galactic center and the Black Nebula." (p. 381)

Sagittari = Sagittarius? Presumably the Black Nebula is much closer than galactic center?

Exactly one page of the text (pp. 381-382) is Andersonian description of the cosmos as seen from space followed by the viewpoint charater's reflection on the cosmic insignificance of man. This passage has seven familiar features.

(i) Sol is "...lost in the thronging glory of stars." (p. 381)

(ii) "The Milky Way foamed in curdled sliver around that enormous night, a shining girdle jeweled with the constellations." (ibid.)

This is the second time that we have found the Milky Way described as "curdled silver." See Curdled Silver, which also refers to Sagittarius. In the "Sargasso..." passage, the "curdled silver" is also "a shining girdle" and "jeweled with the constellations": three descriptions.

(iii) In "Sargasso...," after the Milky Way, Anderson next describes other galaxies. These have been mentioned a few times and maybe I should be listing the references to them as well? See here.

"Far and away wheeled the mysterious green and blue-white of the other galaxies, sparks of a guttering fire with a reeling immensity between." (ibid.)

(iv) "Looking toward the bows, one saw the great star-clusters of Sagittari, the thronging host of suns burning and thundering at the heart of the Galaxy." (ibid.)

Humanity migrates in that direction in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. See Sagittarius.

(v) Next, Donovan begins to reflect and thus touches on three more familiar themes. First:

"And what have we done? thought Basil Donovan. What is man and all his proud achievements?" (ibid.)

"What is man...?" is a Biblical quotation. See also A Note...

(vi) Donovan continues:

"Our home star is a dwarf on the lonely fringe of the Galaxy, out where the stars thin away toward the great emptiness." (ibid.)

Thus, he contradicts the earlier implication that mankind operates on a "Galactic" scale and also connects with the familiar theme of  "the edge of one spiral arm."

(vii) Finally, his continuing reflection reminds me of some short passages that I quoted here from Anderson's "Flight to Forever":

"We've ranged maybe two hundred light years from it and it's thirty thousand to the Center! Night and mysteries and nameless immensities around us, our day of glory the merest flicker on the edge of nowhere, then oblivion forever - and we won't be forgotten, because we'll never have been noticed." (ibid.)

Two hundred light years is supposed to be the radius of the Empire in Flandry's time but see:

"The Astronomy Of The Technic Civilization Saga" by Johan Ortiz, here.