The internal structure of Poul Anderson's Technic History is so intricate, interesting and intriguing that I frequently try yet again to summarize that structure and its contents both clearly and comprehensively but must now be approaching the limit of my ability to do this. However, if at this stage we focus on the fact that the history commences with interplanetary exploration in "The Saturn Game" and ends with the exploration of the Cloud Universe globular cluster beyond the Dragon's Head Nebula in another spiral arm of the galaxy in "Starfog," then it sounds like a different history. From the point of view of "Starfog," all the intervening events have served only to bridge the temporal chasm between local Solar interplanetary exploration and human civilizations spread through several spiral arms. From this perspective, we have left the Polesotechnic League, Avalon and the Terran Empire far behind although we must always return to them in order to appreciate the Technic History as a whole.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And people in the Commonalty COULD go back to Terra to find out what had happened there since the Empire. But most don's seem interested enough to do so. That's not necessarily bad, so much time and literal space had passed that most people in the Commonalty, busy as they were with their own lives, see little reason to go back to regions where the Empire had once ruled.
By contrast, Asimov did give us glimpses of what happened to the capital world of the Galactic Empire, Trantor, in the concluding chapters of FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE. He even gives us a too rare example of evocative writing in the opening paragraphs of "Death on Neotrantor."
Ad astra! Sean
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