The New Faith And Others

Referring to the immediately preceding post, Christopher Holm became Arinnian by joining Stormgate Choth and later married Tabitha Falkayn, a direct descendant of David Falkayn, who is also Hrill of Highsky Choth, most of whose members, according to Hrill, are of the Old Faith. If we are reading Poul Anderson's Technic History in chronological order of fictional events, then we remember that a conflict between Christian and New Faith attitudes to death and dying was the crux of Peter Berg's narrative in the earlier story, "The Problem of Pain." My point, as ever, is how rich, detailed and interconnected the Technic History is. Any summary has to be revised more than once to include every internal connection.

Here we can contemplate three galactic monotheisms:

Ythrians of the New Faith see the shadow of God the Hunter across the future;

Peter Berg's church had concluded that Jesus came only to humanity whereas the Jerusalem Catholic Church ordained the Wodenite Axor who seeks for evidence of an extraterrestrial Incarnation;

Merseians of the Roidhunate believed that "the God" had intended galactic hegemony for their race.

Three paradoxically incompatible monotheisms.

If Merseians are as diverse as human beings, then their failure to conquer the galaxy will have multiple consequences. Some will become secularists whereas others might convert to the New Faith or to a Terrestrial religion. Among Wodenites, although Axor became a Christian, Adzel had embraced Mahayana Buddhism.

The galaxy sounds like London or Birmingham. (In Birmingham, there were Christian, Muslim and Krishnaist propagandists on the streets. On visiting the Buddhist Centre, I recognized a Sikh messenger coming out as I went in and was told that people brought up in Jewish and other traditions came to inquire about alternatives.)