Maria Crowfeather, mother of Flandry's daughter, Diana Crowfeather, came to Imhotep from Atheia which, after the Long Night:
"...was supposed to have retained or regained almost as many amenities as Old Earth knew in its glory..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 665.
Unfortunately, we are told nothing of Hermes, Avalon or many other civilized planets during the post-Imperial periods. In one of those periods, Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, refers to the Terran Empire as the First Empire. Of course, anyone can use the word, "Galactic," but, if its use in this instance implies a single Galaxy-wide civilization, then that must be long after the Commonalty period when diverse human civilizations have spread through two or more spiral arms but have little mutual contact. The Commonalty is an interstellar service organization in one civilization and thus is not a government like those of the Solar Commonwealth or the Terran Empire. We are now talking about historical periods long after van Rijn or Flandry and we would like to know a lot more about them.
5 comments:
I could see some future interstellar culture using "galactic" in a way that greatly exaggerates the scale of what they are doing.
See the use of "Starship" by the SpaceX company.
Kaor, Jim!
You beat me to making a similar comment. It might be more plausible not to make too much of things like "Galactic" Archaeological Society.
Ad astra! Sean
Indeed.
Or the World Series.
Re-reading one of the Van Rijn stand-alone stories and the government/society of Esperance, which showed up as an Imperial base many (fictional) years later, weas settled by (essentially) humans who organized their society as the "Commonalty" and had a policy of attempting to assist neighboring systems via diplomatic, economic, and development assistance.
May have simply been a word he liked, but Anderson may also have been suggesting some lasting ties between pre- and post-imperial civilizations. Be interesting if the family ever organized and published his notebooks; not quite Tolkien, but there appears to be a potential audience - as witness the posters here. ;)
Kaor, Dave!
I have to disagree. We see mention in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND of how the dreamy idealism of the founders of the Esperance colony had to be jettisoned due to the need to face the harsh practicalities forced on Esperance during the anarchy of the Time of Troubles. Bandits, war lords, pirates, etc., would not give a hoot about their idealism!
Also, many very different societies in different eras are likely to have many words/concepts in common.
I do agree as regards Anderson's papers. I like to think there may be some publishable fragments among them.
Ad astra! Sean
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