Returning to Anderson's The Long Way Home, we continue to find points of interest. The interstellar Commercial Society resembles in different ways the Polesotechnic League, the Nomads and the Kith. Goltam Valti of the Society bears a surname familiar from Anderson's Psychotechnic History but resembles Nicholas van Rijn physically and in feigned self-pity. He is "'...a lonely old man.'" (CHAPTER FOUR , p. 44) Like the League of the Technic History, the Society deals in luxuries, recruits non-humans and is a horizontal community cutting across planetary aristocracies. Like the Nomads of the Psychotechnic History and the Kith who have their own future history series, Society personnel spend their lives in their great spaceships.
Next up is a sensorial feast when an alien hunter experiences the Terrestrial environment.
To the stars.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Just reading about Goltam Valti and how he resembled Nicholas van Rijn made me smile. I like Old Nick--from a safe distance! (Laughs)
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I suspect that Valti is only a shadow of van Rijn, though.
I would like to work for van Rijn as some kind of academic expert if he needed one. I suspect that, if he and I ever socialized, then he would be prepared to listen to any opinions however outrageous and either laugh them off or denounce them roundly but continue to value the work of the man who had uttered them. If our lives were ever on the line, then loyalty would be absolute.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, Valti was only a shadow of how Anderson developed Nicholas van Rijn in the Technic stories.
Old Nick valued competence in those who worked for him--and was loyal to them. However much he disagreed with you--he would do his best for you if you ever needed his help.
And I'm convinced a man as well read as Old Nick would be perfectly able to give detailed arguments from both facts and theory why he believes your preferred views of society/economics were mistaken.
Ad astra! Sean
Definitely.
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