Languages on Earth include English and Interhuman.
David Ryerson has married a high-class Australian common. He could gain technic rank by marrying into a technic family but prefers to do it on his own merits. In any case, he plans to emigrate to a colony planet, Rama, where hereditary distinctions do not matter.
"Protector" turns out to be a title periodically seized by different generals. High tech barbarism proliferates between timelines. Adults are free from everyone except contractual overlords and the Protector.
Despite the apparent easiness of teleporting to and from spaceships, spacemen die. Magnus Ryerson has lost three sons and has an artificial hand. The theme here is that men die in space as they did at sea. The original title referred to the sea, the second to stars.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And as time passes hereditary or quasi-hereditary distinctions always comes back. It's simply what human beings are like and there's no point getting upset about it. What really matters is whether or not mew men can rise from a lower to a higher status without undue difficulty. Plus whether or not upper class people are penalized for committing crimes.
Ad astra! Sean
On average, human beings will always favor their near kin.
Also, of course, meritocratic systems -produce- hereditary distinctions, particularly if there's a degree of social mobility on their own merits for women.
It used to be (when Poul was a young man, for example) for fairly high-ranking men, professionals and business executives, to marry secretaries or receptionists.
Since careers have become more open to women, high-ranking men now generally marry women with similar backgrounds and career paths.
In the US today, the second-best predictor of your income is your parents' incomes.
The -best- predictor is your IQ; and IQ is largely genetic, absent environmental insults in childhood.
Immigration tends to disguise this a bit, but in a closed but meritocratic system the upper classes would get smarter and smarter and the lower duller and duller.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. You amplified, filled out, and made clearer what I was trying to say.
And in the 1950's high ranking/high status men might also marry nurses and school teachers.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: and in the 1950's, nurses and school teachers (and secretaries) were often higher-IQ than they tend to be now, because there was an artificial limit on their potential rise in the status hierarchy.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Makes sense to me. Unfortunately, removal of that artificial limit seems to have resulted in many public schools getting very bad teachers.
Ad astra! Sean
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