Many Earths

Readers of Poul Anderson's works are very aware that, when Daniel Coffin describes Earth as it had been at the beginning of Anderson's Rustum History (see Cultures), that is the Earth of one period in just one of many timelines. Other Earths are as different from ours and from each other as a historically and scientifically informed author is able to imagine. We will cite just two examples.

A Time Patrol instructor confides:

"'Wait till you've been to the decadent stage of the Third Matriarchy! You don't know what fun is.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14.

The rest is left to our imagination.

An Earth that I particularly like comes right at the end of another novel:

"Earth is a quiet world."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), XVII, p. 120.

However, we are assured that, despite the quieteness, there are sounds. The following is part paraphrase and part quotation:

wind soughs in great forests;

"...birds sing, cataracts brawl, the oceans rush on the moon's trail around the globe." (ibid.);

there is enjoyment in starport towns and galactic youth in educational centres;

there are also living arts, sciences and scholarship;

but nothing new is built and the old is preserved;

robots guard an immortal spaceman's property for centuries;

ivy and lichen grow on the mostly empty Niyork towers;

traffic is minimal - "...an occasional groundcar, a few pedestrians." (pp. 122-123)

I would like it. Many would not.