Saturday 30 December 2023

Forms Of Social Organization

Dig the details in Poul Anderson's Technic History:

choths on Ythri and Avalon;

Vachs on Merseia and Dennitza;

also a Parliament of Man on Avalon and a tri-cameral Parliament, including a House of the Zmayi, on Dennitza;

trade-routes on Cynthia;

tribes on Woden;

communions on Dido;

scholars, landfolk, townfolk, tri-cameral Parliament, tinerans, Riverfolk, Orcans and Highlanders on Aeneas;

something incomprehensible on Sphinx;

Imperial rule but also the independent community of Zacharia on Daedalus.

Does any other future history series present this amount of detail? We can name some that do not.

8 comments:

Jim Baerg said...

We only see humans and one extraterrestrial intelligent species, the Eridians, in "Project Hail Mary". The 'thrums' the Eridians use to come to consensus seem rather incomprehensible to humans.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

No, I can't think of any other "future histories" as complexly worked out as Anderson's Technic series. Pournelle's Co-Dominium timeline being the example closest to Anderson's work as regards richness of detail.

Happy New Year! Sean

DaveShoup2MD said...


Piper and Heinlein both covered a lot of "time and space" in their respective corpus, and each had some fairly respectable aliens and governments, but Anderson probably edges them both out ...

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Dave!

If I was more familiar with Piper's Terro-Human future history I might have included his work alongside that of Anderson and Pournelle's. And perhaps I should have mentioned Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind stories.

Happy New Year! Sean

DaveShoup2MD said...


Sean - Most of Piper's works are accessible via various internet repositories, including Project Gutenberg. Entertaining reads, and - for example - they have characters who pass the Bechdel-Wallace test AND aliens who answer Campbell's "Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man" which is pretty good for the 1940s-1950s, honestly.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Dave!

I have nothing against looking up and reading stories online. But, I'm old fashioned, I prefer hard copy books.

Noted, look up the Bechdel-Wallace test. And Campbell gave a good definition!

Happy New Year! Sean

DaveShoup2MD said...


Same to you. ;)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Dave!

Thanks!

Ad astra! Sean