The deck is hardwood without brightwork because metal is rare. Bougainvillea and vines grow over cabins. Carved figures represent:
Tanaroa Creator, in abstract symbols;
Lesu Haristi with his cross;
shark-toothed Nan.
Computer-directed, biologically fueled, motors continually adjust sails and vanes and there are sunpower screens.
Ocean rolls and glitters in indigo, turquoise and aquamarine, with rushing waves and chuckling wavelets. Sun dazzles on sails and a flying albatross and warms bare skin. Whales pass. Cool wind brings salt odors. A girl dances to a bamboo flute.
Jack Havig leaves radioisotopes in a safe place in the twentieth century and presents them to the Maurai after they have decayed. He spends "'...more than a year among the early Maurai..." (p. 119) and is married to Xenia in Constantinople for five years. (p. 120) Thus, large parts of his lifespan are invested in different useful activities.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That bit about "shark toothed Nan" puzzles me whenever I read the Maurai stories. I simply don't remember that goddess being mentioned in any pagan pantheon. I just now tried to find out but googling online several pages looking for "shark toothed Nan," but no luck. Was "Nan" something Anderson created?
I did find quite a lot of stories about Malta making a fuss over Sir David Attenborough giving little Prince George a fossilized shark tooth!
Ad astra! Sean
Might be invented.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree. Something Anderson invented.
Ad astra! Sean
Ran is a personification of the sea in pagan Norse mythology.
BTW, I think the shortage of (small-scale) metal use in the Maurai future history is a mistake.
Eg., in "The Sky People", the ornamental ironwork outside windows has been made into tools, and the peasants use stone-headed hoes because the ancients (us) used up the iron, and lances have fire-hardened heads
This is a misconception. Pre-industrial iron-smelting relied on -small- deposits of iron.
In the industrial era, use shifted to large, and then huge, deposits of iron.
This wasn't because the small, scattered deposits were used up. It was because industrial-scale iron smelting required huge inputs, which could only be economically sourced from huge concentrated deposits, like Mesabi, Labrador, Kiruna, Magnetogorsk, etc.
But the small, scattered deposits are -still there-. If we revered to using pounds per capita per year instead of thousands of pounds, or tons, we could tap them again and spearheads and hoes wouldn't be scarce.
So maybe Ran became Nan?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I also thought of how, in your Change books, the survivors were able to "mine" untold TONS of metals by salvaging cars (and probably things like washing machines refrigerators by the MILLIONS). And arrowheads were made from millions of stainless steel SPOONS.
Yes, Anderson should have remembered those relatively small deposits of iron ore for his Maurai stories. Metal goods might still have been relatively costly, but fairly widely used.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Iron -was- more costly before the Industrial Revolution; it was used only where wood wouldn't do nearly as well. But at those prices, it wasn't scarce, and probably wouldn't have been for millions of years. It's a common element.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, RELATIVELY more costly does not have to mean PROHIBITIVELY expensive. I am sorry to say that was a flawed premise in Anderson's Maurai stories, making metals so expensive.
Ad astra! Sean
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