The concluding two installments of the Earth Book, both set on Avalon, the planet colonized by David Falkayn, are, at least according to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, also set in the same century as the dissolution of the League, therefore before:
the slave revolt that led to the founding of the Terran Empire, as described in "The Star Plunderer";
the early Terran Empire, as described in "Sargasso of Lost Starships";
the unsuccessful Terran Imperial attempt to annex Avalon, as described in The People Of The Wind.
However, the Earth Book interstitial passages are fictitiously written after the events of The People Of The Wind. Thus, the Earth Book finally completes the first section of the Technic History and paves the way for Dominic Flandry defending the Terran Empire in the Young Flandry Trilogy. (And he mostly defends it against the Merseians who had survived supernova radiation thanks to Falkayn.)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The question remains open on how seriously we should take "Sargasso of Lost Starships." Should we understand it as a fiction set in the Early Empire by a writer who lived long afterwards? Analogous to those pulp novels read by Persis d'Io in ENSIGN FLANDY, titled OUTLAW BLASTMAN and PLANET OF SIN.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Even acknowledged fictions become part of the history. In the Bible, Job, Jonah, Ruth and the parables are fiction.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree! The Books of Jonah, Job, Ruth, Esther, etc., are best understood as meant by the inspired authors as edifying fictions. I've tried to suggest that to some "evangelical" Protestants, without much luck. Yes, the parables were stories used by Christ to drive home His points.
Ad astra! Sean
Human beings can't communicate -- or live -- without metaphor and fiction.
The difference between fiction and lies is that fiction isn't intended to deceive, -or- to be taken literally as a factual tally.
Fiction speaks truth, but in a different way from a blueprint or a report.
Taking fiction literally turns it from truth to falsehood, because reading it that way is self-deception.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your first sentence: I agree!
Second sentence: Again, I agree. In fact I first came across that distinction between a fiction and a lie from reading Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven's THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE way back in 1975.
Third sentence: I agree! And I tried to suggest to some that books of the Bible, like Jonah, should be read that way.
Your last sentence: And I think some really passionate fans of the works of Tolkien were so enthralled by the Middle Earth mythos that they came to believe them as literally true. Such as Astrid Larssen, in your Emberverse books.
Even Tolkien could be half tempted to believe his Middle Earth stories were more than fictions. In THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN (Houghton Mifflin: 2000, page 413), Tolkien wrote of a gentleman who came to visit him who said something that startled him, "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?" Tolkien wrote: "Poor Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said, 'No, I don't suppose so any longer.' I have never since been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff anyone up who considers the imperfections of 'chosen instruments,' and indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose."
I also thought of how Dante insisted in his "Letter to Can Grande Della Scala" that his great poem about Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise were not poetic fictions, but based on a true vision granted to him about the afterlife. Since I don't arbitrarily exclude the supernatural, I accept that was Dante's belief.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment