Wednesday 23 October 2024

Order And Chaos

"...the minions of Chaos were as determined as the forces of Order. A collision was inevitable."
-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 1 (Riverdale, NY, February 2018), p. 215.

Order versus Chaos in the Psychotechnic History? It is Law versus Chaos in some of Poul Anderson's fantasies and chaos, manifested in a personal causal nexus, is the ultimate enemy of the Time Patrol.

See:


Chaos is uppermost in the next instalment, "Brake." A post-war era begins in "Marius" and approaches its end in "Brake" - even though there was one interplanetary war between these two bookends!

"Brake" was a difficult story on first reading - continuous action with no explanation until very near the end - but I now know what to look out for on rereading: a Planetary Engineer who is also a Rostomily Brother; a reference to the seminal figure of Fourre; bizarre sectarianism on Earth, even more bizarrely referred to only tangentially by characters in space.

Here, we prepare for a house move, although within Lancaster, and for participation in some current activities. Stay tuned.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good luck! It has to be so tough, moving to a new house. There's so much you either have to or want to take with you.

Ad astra! Sean