Roan Tom assesses the star that he is approaching:
"That was not a typical main sequence star, Tom thought, though nothing in his background had equipped him to identify what the strangeness consisted of." (p. 460)
That is the thought of a star rover. There are levels of knowledge. I can differentiate between conversations in French and in German even when understanding a word of neither. Tom can differentiate between typical and untypical stars without understanding what that difference is. He would pick up at least that much knowledge during a lifetime of interstellar travel. (He was born in a spaceship.)
This story is full of the kinds of knowledge that would be commonplace to people living then even though they are not commonplace to us now. If the story had been a fantasy, then how to protect yourself against vampires might have been commonplace knowledge! And Poul Anderson wrote both good fantasy and good hard sf - although, while focused on one genre, it is hard to reenter the mind-set of the other.
3 comments:
It's a good story... and I think the Indian girl is great.
"Indian girl"?
I don't recall a character who fits that.
Did you mean Yasmin? Who is from Sassania. That name makes it sound like it is a colony world settled by people of Iranian ancestry who had high regard for pre-Muslim Iran.
Kaor, Jim!
Just a small mistake by Stirling.
Ad astra! Sean
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