Tuesday, 9 February 2021

Merseian Philosophers

On Merseia, Max Abrams asks Brechdan Ironrede for:

"'...access to your libraries, journals, whatever is public information as far as you're concerned but may not have reached Terra.'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER TEN, p. 97.
 
Decades later, Chunderban Desai proposes to study questions like whether the Merseians are already decadent. I like the recent combox suggestion that Desai might use materials acquired on Merseia by Abrams.

What might Merseian social philosophers be like? Some would rationalize the Roidhunate whereas others would see beyond it but would have to express themselves carefully. One might ask, "What are the qualities of a wise race?," knowing that many of his readers would assume that a "wise race" was nothing other than the Merseians of the Roidhunate but hoping that a few might consider the possibility that someone else might be wiser than them - if not Terrans, then Chereionites?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would consider the Ice People of Altai a far better candidate to be a wise race. And wiser than Aycharaych, IMO.

And we see mention as well in ENSIGN FLANDRY of the young Dominic assisting Abrams in collecting and cataloging the works of those Merseian philosophers and historians.

Ad astra! Sean