Poul Anderson's Time Patrol Series
Initial premise: world-lines like tough rubber bands, difficult to distort.
Later installments: continual quantum changes, sometimes manifesting macroscopically.
Anderson's Dominic Flandry Series
Earlier: sword fights in alien castles.
Later: more plausible humanly colonized planets.
(Such scenarios might coexist in different parts of one galaxy. However, imaginatively and conceptually, they are different kinds of fiction.)
Does the nature of the Terran Empire change as the Flandry series progresses? See Terran Imperialism. This question will generate some discussion of narrative points of view, either today or tomorrow.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I never thought the sword fights we see in some of the Flandry stories were that implausible. I find it very likely to imagine some people taking an interest in "archaic" practices from the past. I'm sure Lancaster or Lancashire has its share of devotees of SCIENTIFIC fencing Flandry mentioned as being popular in his time. And that will remain true in the future as well as now. So I'm puzzled why you keep mentioning sword fights in the future as somehow odd.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Aliens who live in castles and fight with swords are more like fantasy characters. There is a very different feel to, e.g., the description of the spaceport on Nyanza - much more like something that might happen in the future.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I think it's a very plausible touch by Anderson to show us both "archaic" as well as futuristic things like space ports in his stories. Because that is exactly how real people behave. That is, you will find modern and "antiquated" things like fencing jumbled up together.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Even chess is an archaic thing, after all! But I think we both agree it's not implausible to believe it will still be played with pleasure a thousand years from now.
Ad astra! Sean
When Poul was a young man the historical memory of early-20th-century Europe was still fresh, when Germany -- the most scientifically advanced country in the world -- was still politically dominated by an aristocracy that -did- live in castles, or at least manor-houses, and -did- duel with swords. The scar on the face of the stereotypic "Prussian Brute" was real enough, a result of a "sip from the soup-plate of honor" in one of the dueling fraternities so common among upper-class youth of the time.
The anachronisms in the alien cultures meantioned in some of the Flandry stories -- Meresia not least -- are the result of modernizations even faster and more spatchcock and uneven than Prussia's.
Not to mention Japan, where the men who commanded the fleet of ironclads which crushed Russia's navy in 1906 had been born in a country where men with the hereditary right to carry the "two swords" were legally entitled to cut down any commoner they pleased.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree, we have to expect to see "archaic" as well as "modern" in any real society, human or not. Yes, in some ways Merseia was analogous to Meiji and Taisho era Japan.
Ad astra! Sean
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