"'We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!'"
-There Will Be Time, XI, p. 119.
This was Poul Anderson's view. In some of his works, extra-solar colonization is presented as an opportunity to maximize human diversity.
The Maurai want to prevent the kind of progress that led to the War of Judgment but do they go too far in retarding progress? Readers can suspend judgment or adopt opposite views as in some other works by Anderson:
the characters in "Progress" discuss this Maurai policy;
in "Time Patrol," Stane wants to build a peaceful civilization but is prevented by the Time Patrol;
in Lodestar," Nicholas van Rijn and his granddaughter disagree about the Polesotechnic League;
in "The Sensitive Man," characters argue about the role of the Psychotechnic Institute. See here.
(I think that the Institute had the chance of doing some good but should have been honest about its limitations.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree Poul Anderson favored diversity, but I don't believe he considered ALL ways of looking, thinking, and living to be equally good. It's plain he disliked the racial supremacism of the Merseians in his Technic stories, or how AIs were shunting aside human beings from real decision making in THE HARVEST OF STARS books, and so on. And I think Anderson thought the Psychotechnic Institute was more likely to bad than not. I could list many things I believe Anderson disliked, but this is enough.
Ad astra! Sean
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