Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979).
Hloch's father, Ferannian:
"...was an engineer who was often in Gray, Centauri and other towns, dealing with humans." (p.1)
"...because of its nearness to populous Gray, our choth receives more humans into membership than most." (p. 1)
"For us aboard the Olga, Captain Gray had decided that, whenever possible, sophonts should not be disturbed by preliminary sightings of our machines."
-"Wings of Victory," pp. 3-22 AT p. 4.
"It was Gray's idea to give women that last assignment." (p. 5)
- as gunners.
The Olga found both Ythri and Avalon, the former so named by its most advanced culture, the latter not named yet because prospective colonists would do that. A later explorer of Avalon says:
"'Offhand, the world - our group called it, unofficially Gray, after that old captain - looked brilliantly promising.'"
-"The Problem of Pain," pp. 23-48 AT p. 32.
"Humans had ample room on Avalon - about ten million of them; four million Ythrians - and even here in Gray, the planet's closest approximation to a real city, they built low and widespread."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT I, p. 441.
"...Avalon's second city - the only one besides Gray which rated the name... Centauri was predominantly a human town..."
-VI, p. 499.
Tracing a name back from a city to a planet, then to a man, feels like authentic history.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The history of the name "Ythri" is even more complicated than that! We first see that name "Ythri" years before Anderson wrote any of the stories showing us Yhtrians, in the original version and text of "Honorable Enemies." This is what I found on page 57 of my copy of the 1965 Chilton Books edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE: "And there were the rival imperia out in the darkness of space, Gorrazan and Ytri [!] and Merseia, like a hungry best of prey--"
And that original text goes back to its first publication in the magazine FUTURE, combined with SCIENCE FICTION, in May 1951! And the line I quoted above was omitted by Anderson when he revised "Honorable Enemies" for Gregg Press in 1978.
And I'm sure you remembered how I discovered Anderson unintentionally had THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN contradicting both versions of "Honorable Enemies" in my article "Finding An Unexpected Contradiction" (writing from memory). I'm still amazed no one else seems to have seen that inconsistency before!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But didn't you offer a good explanation? Excessive secrecy within Terran Intelligence?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I did! Or, rather a friend of mine did, and I incorporated it into my article. Imperial Intelligence took a proper concern for "need to know" too far.
Ad astra! Sean
Letting people know more than should is one error; obsessive hoarding of information another. Both plague intelligence agencies of all sorts.
In Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy an intelligence secret is known by only about 7 people in Sweden.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
IOW, it's very hard to find the right balance between sharing too much or too little information.
Ad astra! Sean
Paranoia is an occupational hazard of intelligence/espionage/counter-espionage work. Everything depends on trust, but you can trust nobody.
James Jesus Angleton at the CIA is a cautionary example -- his obsession with moles did a lot of harm. Though there -were- moles, of course.
Conversely, MI6 wasn't suspicious -enough-, particularly of those of the 'right sort' with the right backgrounds.
Stalin is a prime example of the perils of paranoia: he became convinced that all the multitude of warnings about the German attack in 1941 were British "disinformation" intended to get Germany and the USSR fighting, and so disregarded them -- in many cases, killed the agents who (quite rightly) warned him.
So he ended up mistrusting everyone... except Adolf Hitler, which is irony, if you like.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, some like Angleton went too far in their distrust. And MI6, by contrast, was far too trusting. When I think of the HUGE harm done by that miserable wretch, Kim Philby, I still feel fury!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I have read of Stalin's folly in disregarding his own spies reports of Germany planning to attack the USSR. And the irony of the morbidly paranoid Stalin TRUSTING Hitler!
I think Operation Barbarossa was set to start by May of 1941, but the Yugoslav side show distracted Germany and delayed the attack by a month. It makes me wonder what might have happened if Germany had struck a month sooner, giving more time for a surprise attack to advance in the USSR? Would the Germans have definitely captured Moscow and advanced to the Ural Mountains? They did reach the edges of Moscow, after all!
Stalin and his creatures would have been forced to scuttle east of the Urals in that case! You wrote once of how, at the height of the German attack, there was panic in Moscow and signs of the Soviet regime starting to disintegrate.
Ad astra! Sean
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