Inhospitable Environments
Aeneas
"'To maintain humans, let alone research establishment, on planet as skimpy as this, you need huge land areas efficiently managed. Hence rise of Landfolk: squires, yeomen, tenants. When League broke down and Troubles came, Aeneas was cut off. It had to fight hard, sometimes right on its own soil, to survive. Landfolk bore brunt. They became quasi-feudal class.'"
-The Day Of Their Return, 3, p. 96.
In addition, the University that had grown from the original research base incorporated military training into its curriculum.
Kirkasant
The high radiation background counteracted the small genetic pool by causing a high mutation rate. Many died but the fittest survived:
"And the planet did have an unfilled ecological niche: the one reserved for intelligence. Evolution galloped. Population exploded."
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 730.
Respect For Learning
Aeneas
The University has retained a mystique:
"'The most ignorant and stupid Aenean stands in some awe of those who are learned.'" (ibid.)
Kirkasant
"The next generation might be too busy to keep public schools, but had enough hard practical respect for learning that it supported a literate class.'" (ibid.)
Respect For Privacy
Aeneas
"'One basic obstacle to understanding you is your pride, your ideal of discipline and self-reliance, your sense of privacy which makes you reluctant to bare the souls of even fictional characters.'" (7, p. 124)
Tatiana Thane asks whether human beings are "'...masks of God?'" (p. 129)
Kirkasant
Kirkasanters initially refuse to allow chromosome analysis because:
"'It...violates integrity. Human beings are not to be probed into.'" (p. 740)
The body is a citadel for the ego which should be inviolable. Personalities are reserved, cold, dignified and self-reliant. Medicine has been handicapped. However, there are no professional gossips, psychoanalysts or confessional writers.
"What was the symbolism behind the silver mask on the door?" (p. 762)
Back to Aeneas: can there be prose fiction without point of view characters or even with such characters whose inner states are not fully revealed to the readers?
13 comments:
Yes -- the Icelandic Sagas have similar characteristics. People's actions are presented without much internalization; you're supposed to deduce that yourself.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I've read enough of the sagas that I should have thought of that myself.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: that's probably where Poul got the idea.
I realize that that was the earlier form of narrative:
"There was a man called X..."
- not:
"X thought..."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling. I agree.
Paul: And the saga would name X's father and give some details about his antecedents and social status.
Ad astra! Sean
I've never found the Kirkasanters particularly credible.
Eg., the extra drive to have children.
Completely unnecessary. Cultural change -- which is much, much faster than genetic -- can do exactly the same thing.
That's why humans haven't shown any fundamental -behavioral- changes in the last 80,000 years; cultural evolution renders it unnecessary.
So we're basically the same people as our ancestors lo these many tens of thousands of years ago.
Now, adaptation to the high levels of heavy metals in the environment, that's credible.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But one side effect of that adaptation to high levels of heavy metals in the environment of Kirkasant could be a strengthening of that drive or desire to have children.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: no, because cultural evolution would do the same thing -faster-.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have to agree. I was trying to think of a way for "saving the appearances" in "Starfog." And 4,000/5,000 years wouldn't give the Kirkasanters the time needed for them to get genetically hard wired to have children.
I have to accept that was a flawed plot point.
Ad astra! Sean
But the cultural drive to have children would probably take generations to change. So that would make a marriage between a Kirkasanter & an outsider *difficult* for some time to come. Poul could have used that to make for the bittersweet ending.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree that is a good suggestion, and one that Anderson could have used. But the really bitter sweet ending to "Starfog" was Daven finding out Kirkasanters would not be able to have children with other branches of the human race.
Ad astra! Sean
How plausible is it that a few centuries much less a few millennia of biotech advances could not make interbreeding between such separated branches of humanity routine?
Kaor, Jim!
I don't know, but neither do I think it will be that quick or simple to achieve.
Ad astra! Sean
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