Friday 4 November 2022

Space-Faring Civilizations

 

(Today, a boat trip on Lake Windermere, a meal in front of the fire in the Stag's Head Inn in Bowness on Windermere (see image) and a return home to the opening evening of the Light Up Lancaster Festival.)

A narrative that focuses entirely on interplanetary or interstellar explorers imparts only hints about the civilization(s) that produced such explorers. For example, in Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game," one of the twenty-first century explorers of the Saturnian System was brought up in the Jerusalem Catholic Church but what else was happening on Earth at that time?

It might become a blog project to extract whatever information can be gleaned from "Starfog" both about the colonized planet, Kirkasant, and about the Commonalty civilization.

Meanwhile, however, on Earth, there is some food to come out of the oven.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The Stag's Head inn seems to be as comfortable a place to visit as Tolkien's The Sign of the Prancing Pony (THE LORD OF THE RINGS) or Anderson's the Old Phoenix ("House Rule" and "Losers' Night")

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Pubs are something Britain does better than anyone else. And the food has improved out of all recognition in the last few generations.

I ate a lot of "traditional" British food in the 60's. Shudder.

Though I think the overwhelming badness of that period was a product of the World Wars, as well as tradition.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I last visited the UK in 1996, and even then I thought much of British cuisine quite good. I did avoid things like those sausages swimming in grease!

One online British friend, an ex-RAF officer, would probably agree, the hardships of WW II and the postwar years, explains why UK cuisine got such a bad reputation.

Ad astra! Sean