Saturday 28 January 2023

In The Thunderbolt

Poul Anderson. "Brake" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 217-252.

The Thunderbolt is a spaceship bound from Earth to Ganymede.

Captain 
Peter Banning

First Mate
Tetsuo Tokugawa

Second Mate
Charles Wayne

Stewards
Joppe Tietjens (already dead)
one other

Other Crew
two engineers
two deckhands, including O'Farrell (already dead)

Names of Remaining Crew
Nielson
Bahadur
Castro
Vladimirovitch

Passengers
Cleonie Rogers, tourist

Serge Andreyev, Solar Union Minerals Authority representative, sent to negotiate a trade agreement

Luke Devon, Planetary Engineer, taking terraforming equipment to Europa, also a Rostomily Brother with Tighe System training

Robert Falken, nucleonic technician, offered a job on Callisto

Morgan Gentry, astronaut, hired by the Jovian Republic to pilot inter-satellite shuttles

Gomez, professor of advanced symbolics, going to the new University of X on Ganymede

They are not all they seem.

This culminating story of the first section of Anderson's Psychotechnic History incorporates a lot of historical references to earlier instalments. We have seen the city of X but now it has a University.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Anyone with some knowledge of Japanese history will Tetsuo TOKUGAWA's name of interest. That was the surname of the family which ruled Japan as shoguns for more than two centuries, down to 1868.

Albeit Tetsuo was not necessarily descended from those shoguns.

Ad astra! Sean