Years ago, the BBC showed all four of Wagner's
Ring operas with sub-titles so I followed the story and was able to summarize it to someone else afterwards although I cannot remember the details now. A guy commentating on it remarked, "What a long way we have come..." He meant from the Rhine maidens to the
Gotterdamerung and it was a long way. This is part of the background of Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" which also comes a long way, through four generations of a Gothic family, yet is just one instalment of Anderson's history-spanning Time Patrol series.
Another long way is taken by Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, from the exploration of the Saturnian system in the twenty first century to the exploration of the Cloud Universe cluster in another spiral arm of the galaxy several millennia in the future. Technic civilization has risen, fallen and been replaced between these two end-points. I reread the Technic History - and Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy - the way some people reread The Lord Of The Rings.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Anderson's works deserved multiple rereadings. What I thought was that, in "A Tragedy of Errors" we see the barbarized aftermath of the Fall of the Empire, THE NIGHT FACE and "The Sharing of Flesh" gives us glimpses of the first post-recovery civilization, at a time when people still remembered the Empire. "Starfog," set millennia later, shows us a wholly new civilization in its early phase, with Old Earth and the Empire still remembered.
Ad astra! Sean
"set millennia later, shows us a wholly new civilization in its early phase, with Old Earth and the Empire still remembered."
Analogous to people of the 21st Century CE knowing something of the Sumerians eg: the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Kaor, Jim!
A good example, I agree. And I have read THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, in translation.
Ad astra! Sean
Of course, Rome haunts us rather more.
Kapr, Mr. Stirling!
And that "haunting" is one reason why many will read your books set in Antonine Rome with such keen interest!
And, in the Technic timeline, the memory of the Terran Empire haunted the minds of many in future millennia. It must have been far more than the "fireside legend" Flandry thought it would become in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that Rome haunts us more than, say, the Han dynasty haunts the Chinese -- despite it lasting 4 centuries and they still calling themselves "Hanren" -- "Han People" and their language "Han tongue". I suspect that's because the Roman Empire was never successfully resurrected, while the Chinese state went through endless cycles of disunity and reunification.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. The pattern after Rome fell was for Europe to be divided into many quarrelsome states, large and small. Rather like the Contending States era of China, except with it not ending. The haunting memory of the old Empire still led to repeated attempts at reunification, starting with the Holy Roman Empire, to repeated French attempts at dominating Europe, then German attempts, with Muscovy/Russia making noises about being the Third Rome, etc., etc.*
Ad astra! Sean
With the Second Rome, Constantinople/the Eastern Roman Empire, angrily insisting that it was the only rightful successor of the First Rome!
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