"Will a flatlander ever understand Belters? They were so mercurial, strong, and more than a little arrogant. Perhaps that was because space left so little room for niceties." (p. 271)
So are they a bit like Poul Anderson's Lunarians? Mercurial and arrogant.
Belters have colonized the Asteroid Belt where they have terraformed the interiors of some artificially spun asteroids. They can visit Earth without needing protective equipment. Lunarians, genetically modified to live in Lunar gravity, spend their entire lives inside artificial environments which, however, they make spacious and colorful.
Humanity needs to get off Earth so we need future generations of Belters, Lunarians or Anderson's asterites who terraform the exteriors of asteroids by controlling gravity.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I absolutely agree on the need for getting off this rock! And I also thought of Anderson's TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS, set in the asteroid belt.
I do wonder, tho, if the necessarily confined and dangerous conditions, at least at first, of life in the asteroid belt, would be more likely to result in a society putting a premium on patience, politeness, perhaps even a certain ceremoniousness.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think it is said in TALES... that the asterites realize not just a moral obligation but a practical necessity to help each other to survive.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that aw well, esp. where I feared I was criticizing how you seem to dislike some of the ways that help took practical forms, as in wealthy asterites hiring some of the poorer asterites as domestic servants or staff.
But my major point was wondering if, because of the inevitably confined and, at least at first, damgerous conditions of life in the asteroids, if that "helpfulness" might take expression in a stress on patience, courtesy, and a certain ceremoniousness of behvior by aaterites to each other. Even TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS, where Anderson shows the asterites as being rather rough in their manners, mentions by the end of the book some of those rough edges being smoothed down.
NOT that I don't disagree with Anderson that a frontier society with a boom town, free wheeling economy will also be at least as likely to have many sharp, rough edges.
Ad astra! Sean
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