Mutable Human Nature

Human beings, already diverse, will diverge further in changed conditions and new environments. That is the message of the concluding three installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History.

In that History, human beings meet many non-human beings and also many altered human populations. On Avalon, Tabitha Falkayn must remind Christopher Holm that, despite their membership of two different choths, High Sky and Stormgate, they remain physically human, not Ythrian.

On Aeneas, Fraina of Jubilee warns Ivar Frederiksen that "sitters," like him, can never stay in the tineran Trains. She says that her own people are dishonest and irrationally violent. It is true and there is an environmental explanation. Fraina begins the process of easing Ivar out of Waybreak precisely by dishonestly relieving him of his credits and libras.

When Ivar, still identifying with the tinerans, refers to "our carnival" (The Day Of Their Return, 10, p. 152), an older fellow nord warns him of the grief caused by:

"'...tryin' to be what you're not born to be.'" (ibid.) -

- exactly like Tabitha warning Christopher. When Ivar replies that he will guide his own private life, the villager shrugs and apologizes. Privacy is an important principle to nords - but does not exist for tinerans.