"'This star which its discoverers called Osman is out past Antares, on the far edge of present-day regular-basis League activities. One planet is inhabited, called by humans Suleiman. Subjovian; life based on hydrogen, ammonia, methane; primitive natives, but friendly.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Esau" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 517-553 AT p. 522.
The information soon becomes planetary, not stellar. However, anyone who knows or can enquire where and at what distance Antares and similarly named stars are located gets a sense of the volume of space permeated by Polesotechnic League activities.
There is one more such datum in this story. Some species can use the Suleimanite plant, bluejack, as a spice and tonic and:
"'Best market for bluejack is on a planet we call Babur. Its star, Mogul, lies in the same general region, about thirty light-years from Osman.'"
-ibid., p. 523.
We usually skip past such details but for once I am focusing on them.
We find another parallel between two stories:
"Van Rijn wallowed deeper into his lounger..."
-ibid., p. 522.
"Nicholas van Rijn wallowed his bulk deeper into his lounger..."
-"The Master Key" (here), p. 277.
But there is a difference. In "The Master Key," van Rijn remains recumbent and solves a problem with his little grey cells whereas, in "Esau," we are told that he avalanches to his feet at the prospect that the talented Emil Dalmady will seek employment elsewhere.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I wondered just now if the star Osman and its planets were discovered and named by Turks. Osman was the name of the founder of the Osmanli dynasty which created the Ottoman Empire, conquered the remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire, and rose to be a dangerous threat to Europe.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, spoke a Turkic language as his first language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babur
I guess Anderson thought it likely that whoever first investigated that general region would use names with a certain theme, like something related to Turkic peoples. This might or might not be because the explorer was of Turkic ancestry himself.
Kaor, Jim!
True, those places could have been named by someone merely interested in Turkish history.
There was the example of Ekrem Saracoglu, Governor of Sector Pacis for the Empire in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND. And who came from Anatolia (Asia Minor) on Terra. So it's not impossible there were some Turks in the Technic series.
Ad astra! Sean
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