Continuing the line of thought from the previous post:
Indeed, the Nomads include a Thorkild Sean so "Ormer Shaun" did look very like another Nomad name.
Nomad men wear kilts whereas Kith ships, separated for decades or centuries, develop their own distinctive styles of dress - which include a green kilt worn by Shaun! His ancestor, Michael Shaugnessy, was originally from, or at least somehow associated with, Ireland so maybe that ancestry explains both the greenness and the kilt?
The more that we dig into the details in Poul Anderson's works, the more such details we find. They are like fractal designs. But now I really must try to get into some other reading before this evening is over.
Because of their foreignness, the Kith are often disliked on Earth although welcomed on colony planets. The Nomads are regarded as a chaos factor by the Stellar Union Coordination Service. However, some Coordinators become Nomads and the latter carry knowledge through the Third Dark Ages. Discussing the Kith History has taken us back to the Psychotechnic History which preceded the Technic History. No other sf writer has so many future history series to compare and contrast.
4 comments:
I never liked the Coordinators, and I thought they'd thoroughly PO any frontiersmen they met. Guess I was right...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You were! Also, I don't really think Nomads with FTL very plausible. With FTL you don't need ships to have large crews permanently living aboard them. Small crews would be far more cost efficient.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, people have to live -somewhere-. I'd think living on a spaceship would be strictly for people with severe agoraphobia, though... 8-).
Long distance spaceships have to be made spacious.
SF contrasts the freedom of interstellar flight with enclosure in metal cabins and corridors but it does not have to be like that.
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