Seasonal Reading

Poul Anderson, "The Season of Forgiveness" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 126-139.

In the combox for The Solutions And A Culmination, I explained why I place so much emphasis on Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. This omnibus collection includes the first appearances of Sandra Tamarin, Coya Conyon, Merseians and Baburites. These two women and two extrasolar species are important elements in the culminating Polesotechnic League novel, Mirkheim. The Earth Book really is a concentrated essence of the Technic History. 

The Earth Book also collects "The Season of Forgiveness," which reuses the planet Ivanhoe, first introduced in the first David Falkayn story in The Trouble Twisters. Since "The Season..." is Anderson's Christmas story, it will be appropriate to reread it next but there is no hurry.

The opening paragraphs present a good overview of how the Polesotechnic League operates over long interstellar distances. Ivanhoe is:

"...the chill planet of a red dwarf star, away off in the Pleiades region, where half a dozen humans laired in the ruins of a city which had been great five thousand years ago, and everywhere else reached wilderness." (p. 127)

The planet:

"...had had no more than a supply depot for possible distressed spacecraft." (p. 128)

We read about that in the Falkayn story. Since then, an investigator has found the valuable herb adir in deserts on another continent. Master Trader Thomas Overbeck's team must persuade Ivanhoans to harvest adir in exchange for trade goods, like the deal on Suleiman in the previous story where the Baburites had intervened. Human traders will not come to a permanent base without their families and will not stay long if the families become unhappy so Apprentice Juan Hernandez's plan to welcome children with a Christmas party will make a good start. We read about the by now familiar League but not about any familiar characters. Known space is big.