"'Orgino was a war chief of three hundred years agone. They said he was so wicked he must have been in pact with the Wanderer, and to this day the commons think he walks the ruins of his cave.'"
-"A Tragedy of Errors," pp. 520-521.
Anderson does not write a ghost story about the wicked war chief walking through the ruins of his castle but would such a story have fitted in the Technic History?
How long is a year?
"...Nike circled its sun in 591 days of 25.5 hours each, as near as made no difference." (p. 499)
So how long three Nikean centuries are is an exercise for blog readers.
"[Tom] left the crumbling flagstones for a walk around the walls. Pseudo-moss grew damp and slippery on the parapet. Once mail-clad spearmen had tramped their rounds here, and the same starlight sheened on their helmets as tonight, or as in the still more ancient, vanished glory of the Empire, or the League before it, or - And what of the nights yet to come? Tom shied from the thought and loaded his pipe." (p. 522)
It was this paragraph that inspired thoughts of social regression and of different historical stages on different planets. Nike had revived, or reverted to, medievalism.
Unlike Tom, we do not shy away from the thought of nights yet to come. In fact, we are reading this future history. Tom refers, either explicitly or implicitly, to at least five periods:
the League;
the Empire;
Orgino's reign, early in the Long Night;
his own period, later in the Long Night;
later periods.
Millennia later, Dave Laure will say:
"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 722.
Yet another succinct summary although Laure skips over the Allied Planets between the Long Night and the Commonalty. We, the readers, also know of three pre-League periods:
the Chaos;
the beginning of Technic civilization;
the Grand Survey.
Perhaps a single word to describe the Technic History is "grandeur."
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Even allowing for shifts and changes of language on Nike, it still seems strange to call a castle on Nike a "cave."
Yes, ghost stories could just as easily be fitted into the Technic Civilization era as the ghost stories of, say, Russell Kirk (which I highly recommend!).
I was very interested to read that a year on Nike is 591 days with 25.5 hours per day. Which means a Nikean year has 15070.5 hours. And 100 times that is 1,507,050 hours. And three times that is 4,521,150 hours. And dividing a Terran century into number by 5 gets you 4,380,000 hours. So, I conclude the Empire had been fallen for over five centuries by Roan Tom's day.
Setting aside, for simplicity's sake, complications like leap year days making one year out of every four contain 366 days, a Terran year of 365 days of 24 hours each has 8760 hours. And 100 times that is 876,000 hours. So a Nikean year is considerably longer than a Terran year.
And I remain skeptical of Daven Laure's statement that the peoples served by the Commonalty don't get into wars! He simply happened to have the good luck to live in a peaceful time. With no guarantee that can or will last!
Ad astra! Sean
The problem with "not getting in to wars" is that you don't get to decide that. Someone -else- does, because while war is a form of political communication, it's also a -unilateral- form of communication.
You can refuse to talk or negotiate with someone, but if they walk up and start hitting you with a club, you're in a fight whether you agree or not.
Of course but there are many situations in which people do not attack each other with clubs so maybe those situations can be generalized? Like we have no reason to fight for the air that we breathe but we, or at least some of us, would all too probably fight if we were down to the last oxygen cylinder in a space station.
However, the trouble with infinite space all around us is that we never know whether kzinti/Merseians/Draka etc will suddenly enter known space so some kind of military preparedness might be a perpetual necessity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
And I agree with both of you gentlemen. It only takes ONE party, disgruntled with things as they are or simply ambitious, for conflicts and wars to start. My view is that here Daven Laure was being rather naive.
Ad astra! Sean
Humans fight over physical resources, but they also fight over things that can't be quantified -- power, group and individual status. And those are "positional goods": they're inherently scarce, because what matters is how you're placed relative to others.
We're primed to do that because they corresponded closely with survival and successful reproduction for our ancestors. It's like favoring your in-group over outsiders, something we have an inherent tendency to do.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree with this argument you made. It fits in with how human beings actually behaves.
Ad astra! Sean
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