"Tonight, while the planet turned, its dark side was so radiant as to drown the very metro-centers seen from Luna."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 5.
And this urban civilization has gone interstellar. Two hundred years previously, on Birthday:
"Fathers had taken their sons outdoors when twilight ended parades and feasts; they had pointed to the early stars and said, - Look yonder. Those are ours. We believe that as many as four million lie within the Imperial domain. Certainly a hundred thousand know us daily, obey us, pay tribute to us, and get peace and the wealth of peace in return. Our ancestors did that. Keep the faith." (ibid.)
This will generate further observations either when I have eaten something or tomorrow.
(The fifth NESFA volume of Anderson's "Short Works" just arrived.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would still argue, using what can be gleaned from what is said said about Zolotoy in "The High Ones," that Terra was no more than 25 percent urbanized. I think it's reasonable to think wide regions were set aside solely for agricultural use, some of them among the huge properties owned by the aristocracy. And we know other regions, like the High Sierra, where Flandry eventually came to own a few hectares of land, were also not urbanized.
We see Crown Prince Josip in Chapter 1 of ENSIGN FLANDRY, but not, to my regret, his father Emperor Georgios. About all we know of him is that he was well meaning and many people thought quite highly of Georgios.
I too have a copy of NESFA Press' DOOR TO ANYWHERE, Vol. 5 of THE COLLECTED SHORT WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON. And I was pleased to discover "Door to Anywhere" had not previously been read by me. It also includes stories I thought highly of, such as "Strangers" and "The Fatal Fulfillment."
Frankly, I hope somebody at NESFA comes across my "Uncollected Works of Poul Anderson" article and is inspired to say: "we should do one or more volumes collecting and reprinting stories by Anderson which has never been collected at all!"
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Precisely the point: collect stories never previously collected.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Absolutely! Every once in a while I go to my "Uncollected" article and brood over those uncollected stories and articles.
Ad astra! Sean
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