An sf series featuring interstellar travel is a perfect setting for any number of stories set in diverse planetary systems with no direct connection between them. Thus, in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "Gypsy" is set on Harbor, "Star Ship" on Khazak and "The Acolytes" on Nerthus, three extra-solar planets. Furthermore, although the colonists on Nerthus retain contact with Earth, those on Harbor and Khazak have lost contact with the rest of the human race and therefore might as well be in separate universes. Such a series becomes broad rather than linear. Imagine stories set on different extra-solar planets in the
Star Trek universe but without the
Enterprise ever
arriving.
However, even an apparently minor background reference can generate narrative discrepancies, e.g.:
"'Out there is the great civilization of the Galaxy...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Star Ship" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), pp. 273-306 AT p. 291.
Either "Star Ship" is set a very long time later than "Gypsy," which states that interstellar civilization is slowly gestating, or, possibly, the human beings who have been stranded for two generations on Khazak have a very inaccurate understanding of what is beyond their planet.
7 comments:
Kazakh is an ethnonym here on Earth -- as in Kazakhstan. It's an early story in Poul's career; he probably picked it because it sounded suitably exotic. He was more careful later.
(In a later version of an early Flandry story, he noted that Flandry was playing a little joke by giving the Scothian leaders names like "Cerdic", out of late-Roman history.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You are right! "Kazakh" should have reminded me of Kazakhstan. And his revision of "Tiger By The Tail" shows Anderson being more careful about names for non-humans.
Ad astra! Sean
BTW I recall reading that the -stan suffix comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root as the English word 'stand'. Kazakhstan is where the Kazakhs stand.
Kaor, Jim!
That I had not known. If anything, I vaguely thought "...stan" originated from when the USSR dominated the region.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Oh, no, it's a very old term common in the Iranian-speaking eastern parts of the IE language area.
Just checked: yeah, it's from a Proto-Indo-European root,*stéh₂-no-m
Meaning "place where you stand", roughly; the original root may have been a verb "to stand".
Many descendant languages (Latin, Proto-Germanic, etc.) have derivatives meaning more or less "dwelling, habitation, home", and some "throne, chair".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks! And I think a philologist like JRR Tolkien would have loved these linguistic comments!
Ad astra! Sean
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