Outside The Galaxy

Reading about the edge of the galaxy, we want to go beyond it but must step outside Poul Anderson's Technic History to do so. While two men drink cocktails on a porch:

"Space dropped dizzily from the viewport, thin starred black here on the rim. Huge and shapeless - we still being more or less within it - the galaxy streamed past and was lost to sight; we looked toward remoteness."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 12.

They go further:

"'There are stars between the galaxies, you know.'" (p. 13)

In fact, the spaceships of this civilization travel between galaxies but, unfortunately, we see only the rim of our galaxy and a single planetary system in intergalactic space.

In Anderson's Tau Zero, the Leonora Christina travels at relativistic speeds through the vast spaces between clusters of clusters of galaxies. In his Genesis, some post-organic intelligences, travelling at sub-light speeds, have reached the Andromeda galaxy although the narrative remains within the Milky Way.

Three steps beyond the Technic History.