Tuesday 31 January 2023

So Many Worlds

"The Green Thumb."

Joe, the new alien farmhand, who claims to be from the obscure planet Astan IV, asks young Pete questions like how many human beings are there and why do they emigrate? So is Joe a spy? Pete cannot answer the first question because human beings are:

"'...spread over so many worlds.'" (p. 29)

In fact, some settlers come not from Earth but from colonized planets. So this has been going on for a long time. Nerthus is not in the first wave of colonization, less than two centuries after the loss of the Traveler.

Earth is "'...an integrate civilization...'" (ibid.) whereas the colonies are not. Why not? This reminds us of the legacy of the Psychotecnic Institute. In the later story, "The Pirate," a spaceship crew is described as "unintegrate" because its members are:

"'...hard cases, none Earth-born, several nonhumans from raptor cultures among them.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Pirate" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 137-165 AT p. 143.

Psychotechnics has done some good but only on one planet.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Joe reminded me of Rax, the non-human spy for the Roidhunate we see in A CIRCUS OF HELLS.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

I wouldn't call that all that "good". I like human beings as they are, warts and all.

S.M. Stirling said...

Incidentally, I think that was the point in GENESIS -- that 'perfecting' human beings would essentially abolish them.