Friday, 21 January 2022

Hornbeck And Tokyo Integrate

"The Trouble Twisters," VII.

On Ikrananka, David Falkayn remembers:

"...his father's castle on Hermes..." (p. 145)

When he returns to Hermes, his family's ancestral home, Hornbeck, is described as a:

"...gray stone manor house..."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XVI, p. 215 -
 
- standing apart from a thorp.
 
Falkayn also remembers:
 
"...Ito Yamatsu's place in Tokyo Integrate..." (p. 145)
 
This confirms the existence of metropolitan Integrates on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth period. Other Technic History installments present Chicago, San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro Integrates. Earth becomes even more heavily urbanized in the later Imperial period when:

"Archopolis was merely a nexus: no matter if the globe had blue oceans and green open spaces - some huge, being property of nobility - it was a single city."
-Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-188 AT IV, p. 44.

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

There seems to be consistent population growth on Earth during the Technic period, right into the Empire.

I would expect that on thinly populated planets, but not on somewhere so urbanized and crowded.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I have tried to suggest elsewhere, using what we see on Zolotoy, in "The High Ones," that urbanization on Earth, even during the Imperial era, might not have been as extreme as these texts might lead us to think. Say about 25 percent of Terra might have become one de facto interlinked city by Flandry's time.

Ad astra! Sean