"Lightning reached. David Falkayn heard the crack of torn air and gulped a rainy reek of ozone. His cheek stung from the near miss."
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, March 2010), pp. 631-682 -
- but keep reading. Anderson's action is above average good and the story is about more than that, in any case. The point is that the oppressed Tamethans have risen against the Polesotechnic League and the trade pioneer crew members are lucky to escape with their lives. This will make Falkayn do something about League injustices and this in turn will make him break his oath of fealty to Nicholas van Rijn. This is a real turning point story.
The story also introduces Coya Conyon, van Rijn's granddaughter and Falkayn's future wife, and, like "How To Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson," conveys some sense of life on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth period. It also shows van Rijn and Coya interacting with Ythrians and brings all these characters - van Rijn, Coya, Falkayn, Adzel, Chee Lan and Ythrians - together in a single short story. "Lodestar" might qualify as the single best instalment in Anderson's Technic History.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think Anderson at first intended "Lodestar" to be the last Polesotechnic League story. Fortunately, he soon decided the issues merely touched on in that story needed to be fleshed out in far greater detail, which led to MIRKHEIM.
Ad astra! Sean
Correct.
Kaor, Paul!
The only real caveat I have for MIRKHEIM being Stirling's suggestion the decay of the League being a bit too rushed in that story. Which made me think it would have been better "timed" 25 years later. But Anderson obviously wanted Old Nick to play a major role in the story, and that would be more plausible at age 80, not 105!
Ad astra! Sean
From SM Stirling:
Incidentally, one thing the Technic history doesn't anticipate is the rapid pace of -biological- scientific advances. There's lots of advances in -physics-, but less in genetics and so forth.
Eg., gene therapy is now out of the experimental phase and is doing wonders.
From Sean M. Brooks:
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't think I can entirely agree. Even as early as ENSIGN FLANDRY, first pub. in 1966, we see things like cloning (even if that word was not used), regeneration of lost limbs and organs using the DNA pattern of the patient. And genetic tech must have played a role in making Technic antisenescence practical. Also, THE GAME OF EMPIRE (1985) mentions how gene therapy was used to eliminate many diseases which had genetic causes from some of Diana Crowfeather's ancestors. Making it unlikely she would suffer from them.
But, of course I am glad gene therapy is so quickly becoming practical. I just wonder if it's too late to do much good for people over age 65.
Ad astra! Sean
Anderson had a physics degree, not a biology degree. While he does mention biological advances, his stories pay more attention to the effects of advances in physics and engineering.
For a contrast see the stories by Lois M. Bujold. The 'wormhole' drive and the defense/offensive in weapons tech seem a bit handwavy to me. However, the advances in biological/medical science are very well thought out, along with the plausible effects on society.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree you made reasonable points. I would argue that the seeming deficiency in Anderson's use of the biological sciences was because, for most of his writing career, advances in those sciences had not gone so far as to justify using them. That said, I still think those fairly few mentions of things like cloning was prescient of him. And we do see greater use of the biological sciences in the HARVEST OF STARS books.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment