Some Interstellar History

 

In After Doomsday, 7, we learn how a missile was able to hit Donnan's borrowed Vorlakka destroyer despite the "new device" that should have enabled the ship to detect and dodge. The Earthmen knew that an enemy craft was running parallel to them but not that it had launched (outmoded) rockets instead of (detectable) paragrav torpedoes!

Although After Doomsday is neither a future nor a galactic history, it does, albeit extremely telegrammatically, summarize the histories of a few planets and their interactions. A galactic history is impossible because there are a million civilization-clusters with little or no intercommunication, let alone any comprehensive "Federation" or "Galactic Empire." We are told about some events in only two such clusters!

The seven-foot-tall humanoid Kandemirians have a "...mountainous concrete dome..." (p. 58) above a deeply buried base on Mayast III whose natives, subservient to Kandemir, resemble giant spiders. "...minor independent powers..." (p. 60) include Xo about which we are told only that, like T'sjuda and Kamdemir, it practices imperialism on primitive planets. In such a short novel with such a vast setting, we welcome any such details, however trivial.

In the Kandemirian interstellar empire, proconsuls do not meddle and "'...respect ancient usage...'" (p. 61) while subjects are protected and can trade. This sounds like the Terran Empire in Poul Anderson's Technic History. The characters are close in our contemplation despite inhabiting completely different space-time continua. 

Chapter 7 concludes with an Andersonian moment of realization for Donnan. Searching the blog, we learn not only, as expected, that we have posted about this moment before but also that it is only the first of two such for Donnan. See here.