"Starfog"

I am starting to reread Poul Anderson's "Starfog," the concluding installment of his Technic History series, although I have already posted much about this story. See here. Upcoming posts might contain multiple links to previous posts.

Appropriately, the Technic History begins and ends with space exploration although across a vast historical distance: the outer Solar System in the twenty-first century as against the far end of another spiral arm millennia later.

The common theme is the challenge and danger of the unknown. The explorer's life is threatened by an unexpected phenomenon, then the author explains that phenomenon on the basis of scientific premises. The explorer has to enter an alien environment to find out what is there, including the dangers. If it had been known in advance what was there, including what the dangers were, then there would have been no need to go.

We accompany Ranger Daven Laure into the globular cluster and wish that we were able to go further.