"...the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideous immensity."
-Poul Anderson, "The Chapter Ends" IN Anderson, Star Ship (New York, 1982), pp. 253-281 AT p. 257.
In Anderson's Technic History, the humanly colonized planet Serieve is even further out on the northern edge of another spiral arm with only the galactic halo and ancient globular clusters beyond. We naturally wonder whether anyone has ventured beyond.
In Anderson's World Without Stars, the instantaneous space jump does enable immortal spacemen to visit Yonderfolk in a planetary system between galaxies and also in other galaxies although unfortunately we are not shown the latter.
In Anderson's Tau Zero, a relativistic spaceship accelerates between groups of groups of galaxies but does not make planetfall until after the universe has collapsed and re-expanded.
In Anderson's The Avatar, a technologically advanced race, the Others, influences the monobloc of a newly forming universe.
Again, a towering and comprehensive imagination.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I wish I recalled where reading about it, but Anderson was not satisfied with TAU ZERO, being pressed by the publisher to turn in a text before he was happy with it.
I also recall how the cosmology of TAU ZERO, after losing popularity among astrophysicists for a time, is now again being accepted.
Ad astra! Sean
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