A Long Way In Space And Time

I was drawn back into rereading Poul Anderson's Technic History this time by my admiration for his paragraph beginning:

"Where the mighty Sagittarius flows into the Gulf of Centaurs..."
-see here.

This led to - among many other things - a consideration of the Ythrians. However, we have left the Domain of Ythri a long way behind now that we are rereading the Long Night period of the Technic History. But Ythri, Avalon and other Ythrian planets must still exist. It is just that our focus has shifted in space as well as in time, as two of the characters point out:

"'We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in time.'"
-The Night Face, I, p. 549.

"'... - behind us. In space and time alike.'"
-see Future Medievalism.

Avalon is mentioned in A Stone In Heaven, the last novel with Dominic Flandry as its central character, which is collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy, shortly before the Long Night installments. In humanly known space, there is a single interstellar history but many planetary histories which part company during periods like the Long Night. I would have preferred an even longer Technic History even at the expense of other later works by Anderson.

The Technic History shows us history, albeit in a fantastic futuristic form, and history shows us "emptiness" in the Buddhist sense, meaning not "nothingness" but absence of permanent underlying substance. All phenomena are interdependent and transient. Compounds that are gasses or liquids in terrestroid environments are solids in Jovoid environments. (At the time of the Commonalty, are there still human beings on Earth, "Martians" on Mars and Ymirites on Jupiter?) Humanity changes in extra-solar environments.

(Next week, our Buddhist group will celebrate its fortieth anniversary with a meal in the Pizza Margherita.)