-Sandra Miesel IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), p. 2.
(The quoted italicized sentence is printed without a question mark.)
To cross an ocean to another continent on the same planet is not to cross light years to stars that might or might not have habitable planets. Even a planet with oxygen in its atmosphere and liquid water on its surface is likely to bear more pitfalls and deathtraps than North America. So I would support exploratory missions but also attempts to address that malaise in the Solar System.
There was a profound malaise before the Second Dark Ages but we have been told that a saner civilization emerged later. In "The Acolytes," young Wilson Pete has just come from the Solar System to the frontier planet of Nerthus so will any of the background details give us some hints as to how sane Solar civilization has become?
On Nerthus, Pete is with his Uncle Gunnar who had explored all over the Galaxy before settling on Nerthus. Thus, "The Acolytes," like "Star Ship," seems to be set later in future history than the Chronology suggests.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But many people might still be willing to leave Earth and accept the dangers of colonizing other worlds if that was what it took to get away from oppressive and tyrannical regimes.
And I'm going to be skeptical of efforts to address that "malaise" if the means chosen requires some fanatical ideology using the State to do that. From the French Revolution onward such efforts have never succeeded.
In his book CHRISTIANITY AND THE CRISIS OF CULTURE, the late Pope Benedict XVI gives us a good analysis of the malaise of our times. Time I reread it!
Ad astra! Sean
Not necessarily worse. 90% of the people who landed at Jamestown in 1607 were dead within two years.
It wasn't until the 1690's that Virginia's English colonists had growth by natural increase. Until then it only survived because lots of immigrants were willing to risk death in pursuit of better economic conditions -- it was rather like moving to London, where there were 4 or 5 deaths for every baptism at the time.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, we have to expect some of the first off Earth colonies to fail. As the Norse colony in Greenland eventually failed. And as the Jamestown colony so nearly failed more than once. And a major many would risk death would because they hoped to strike it rich.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not advocate the State imposing a fanatical ideology.
Paul.
In North America, the air was breathable and the water was drinkable. Even that cannot be guaranteed on an extra-solar planet.
Kaor, Paul!
You don't, but too many others since the abominable French Revolution have and would do such a thing, fanatically trying to make their ideologies "work."
Of course! But even the Moon has water, as in deposits of ice in shadowed areas the Sun does not reach. And we know Mars has large deposits of ice. Given access to water many things becomes possible for colonists.
Ad astra! Sean
True, but the level of technology is much, much higher too.
Someone who crosses an interstellar distance has to take an environment with him so he should not be dependent on finding a habitable environment on arrival! People who can move around in space and who can keep themselves alive there probably will not want to go down to the bottom of a gravity well as Larry Niven put it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree, but if men like Robert Zubrin can write in books like THE CASE FOR MARS detailed explanations for how settlements on "Barsoom" could survive, given the tech of c. 2010, that tells us something. And Musk's successes in reviving spaceship technology, combined with what Zubrin wrote, makes me think we are at the very threshold of getting off this rock.
Paul: That is correct, whether STL or FTL, spaceships will need a full circle life support system.
I have nothing against O'Neill style habitats, and I wish some had already been built! But I still believe many who might leave Earth would prefer to settle on terrestroid planets, if/when any are found.
Ad astra! Sean
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