-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT III, p. 464.
"Every society that remained in the Gathering was represented; and Ishtarians were more wildly inventive than men where it came to social institutions. Tribes, clans, monarchies, aristocracies, theocracies, republics, communisms, anarchisms found approximate analogues in this chamber."
-Fire Time, IX, p. 107.
A member of a Monwaingi Society describes how completely different cultures coexist in a single geographical area:
"'This is a Kodau village, for example. I suppose you could best describe them as religious communists. They don't bother us and we don't bother them.'"
-Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (New York, 1962), 10, p. 83.
Ythrians, Ishtarians and Monwaingi have something in common.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The closest something like this has happened in human history would be the Holy Roman Empire, before and after the Thirty Years War, when there were upwards of 300 states, large and small, in the Empire. With those states being either monarchies or republics. Or more than 300 if you toss in the Knights of the Empire, gentry families whose estates were independent of any other state, and who owned allegiance only to the Emperor. It worked, down to the time of the French Revolution.
We get a glimpse of this in Anderson's story "Wolfram."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it worked, if you didn't mind constant trade barriers and fairly frequent violence.
One of the Imperial Knights, Gottfried "Götz" von Berlichingen also known as Götz of the Iron Hand, was a mercenary and bandit and feudist (who fought 15 feuds by his own testimony) who robbed with a fine impartiality.
The Archbishop of Mainz tried to restrain him, calling on him to surrender in the Emperor's name.
He replied: "To my master the Emperor I give all due respect and obedience. As for you, you arch-pimp in a red bedgown, "Er kann mich am Arsch lecken".
As a result, saying "Götz Berlichingen" (aka "the Swabian Salute") became a euphemistic way of saying "Kiss my ass" in German.
It's not an accident that the Holy Roman Empire became a pan-European byword for chaotic backwardness.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, both about the fairly frequent violence and petty trade barriers. But I thought the last century of the Holy Roman Empire, wherein Anderson placed "Wolfram," was fairly free of the kind of violence exemplified by the bandit Gotz of the Iron Hand.
Compared to the failure of the Hohenzollern Reich and the utter horror of Hitler's Reich, the old Empire looks pretty good!
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment