Saturday, 18 April 2020

From "Marius" To "Gypsy"

Poul Anderson, "Gypsy" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, 2018), pp. 255-270.

First person narration for the second time in the Psychotechnic History.

An interstellar spaceship, the Traveler, orbits a terrestroid extra-solar planet, Harbor. The viewpoint character and narrator returns alone from a month-long visit to the nonhuman inhabitants of the fifth planet in this system.

We could not possibly be further away from Etienne Fourre on an unlit ruined street in post-World War III Europe at the beginning of the first Psychotechnic story, "Marius." Are these stories really connected or is it just that different early stories are nominally tied together by being fitted into periods nearly a millennium apart in a Heinlein-derived time chart? A similar question might be asked about stories set in 1066 and 2020. History is a single process but some of its periods seem to be set on different planets.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

You have touched on a reason for why Anderson became dissatisfied with the Pyschotechnic stories. They were too DISJOINTED, they did not seem to truly fit well together.

Rather nice, that illustration you found. And the woman's hairstyle definitely has a Fifties look, which fits the period when "Gypsy" was written.

Ad astra! Sean