Maclaren is addressed as "Technic Maclaren." (pp. 132, 139) Poul Anderson's various fictional futures feature psychotechnicians, Polesotechnicians and, in this case, Technics who are a class rather than a profession. There is also a Technon and a Technarchy in Anderson's The Long Way Home and a Paleotechnic geological era in his Genesis. Hard sf futures are technologically based.
Maclaren and Tamara visit Magnus Ryerson:
"There was silence for a while, except that they could all hear the waves boom down on the strand." (p. 139)
Above and behind technological advances, the Northern environment still makes itself known.
"Magnus Ryerson...let the surf snarl on the rocks of his home for a while." (p. 140)
His environment snarls as he does. He teaches Maclaren that men go to the sea and the stars because they are men.
Do they? That is where this novel ends.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
All human societies, without exception, have upper classes, "aristocracies," de facto or formal. Maclaren belongs to the Technic class. It's simply what human beings are like and do.
You could have discussed how Kipling's poem "We Have Fed Our Sea" was quoted and how it moved and affected Maclaren.
Ad astra! Sean
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