Monday, 7 June 2021

Sagittarius

"'You will go to the Sagittarian frontier of the Stellar Union,' the machine had said."
-Poul Anderson. The Peregrine (New York, 1979), CHAPTER IV, p. 23.
 
"'...there'll be Hulduvian colonies between Sol and Sagittarius which we would disturb in passage.'"

In the Psychotechnic History, Sagittarius is a frontier but, in 3120, human beings live on its Solward side whereas, tens of thousands of years later, they are about to complete their migration to its other side:

"'Civilization - the civilization of man and his non-human allies - has moved inward, toward the great star-clusters of Galactic center. This part of space means nothing to us any more; it's almost a desert. You haven't seen starlight till you've been by Sagittarius.'" (ibid., p. 201)
 
This series might renamed the Sagittarian future history.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And many people, human and non human, in the Technic series, thought there were more than enough stars in our part of the galaxy!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Incidentally, it now looks as if the center of our galaxy, like others, is occupied by an immense black hole, and a vast zone around that has a lethally high background radiation level.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I have read about that, including (I think) in some of the later works of Anderson. That black hole and lethally high radiation backgrounds makes it highly any intelligent life exists there. Unless we hypothesise people like the strange "plasma beings" Anderson speculated about in "Kyrie."

Really, the universe is a very dangerous place!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Larry Niven has the galactic center black hole in A WORLD OUT OF TIME.