On New Hermes (Not To Be Confused With Hermes In The Technic History)

"Inside Straight."

Poul Anderson experimented a lot with short stories. When starting to read a new story, we do not know what we are going to get. It might be neither an easy read nor to our individual taste. This is a very different experience from reading the same author's many novels and series.

Rereading "Inside Straight," I do not remember the plot but get the distinct impression that the militarist who thinks that he will easily conquer a population of gamblers is about to learn otherwise.

Many details are familiar. There is a list of "'...pioneer troubles...'" (p. 98) when colonizing a planet:

unknown diseases;

wild animals;

storms;

a strange ecology;

hard times until machines are constructed.

I now think that it would be much harder than that! Human beings colonizing a planet are not like Europeans arriving in Australia. A new planet is not like a new continent. We think in terms of a breathable atmosphere and cultivable land. But everything will be different. That "strange ecology" is not the one that all Terrestrial life has evolved in and is adapted to. Leaving Earth, we are far more likely to live inside large artificial habitats which we will have to travel in if we are to cross an interstellar distance in any case. As Larry Niven's Belters ask: Why go down to the bottom of a gravity well? Especially if you are going to have to terraform like blazes in order to draw a breath? Or will some colonists try James Blish's "pantropy"  - Adapted Men - route? That also seems implausible except maybe in the case of a few planets that are not too dissimilar from Earth. (Sf is a discussion. Here, we have cited future histories by Niven and Blish.)

I did not expect this story to generate this much discussion. However, Poul Anderson always generates discussion.

Description Of A Waterfront

glistening blue sea

white foam

crowded harbour

flying boats

big watercraft

ferroconcrete piers

artificial arms, loading and unloading

wealth-filled warehouses

oil

spices

babbling

- three senses

From an aircar with a gravity drive, two characters see:

night-blue sky

flooding moon

myriad stars

moonlight on a darkened sea

"...the great milky sprawl of the galaxy." (p. 107)

- and they hear:

"...the far, faint crying of birds." (ibid.)

This is not bad for a short story that I am still not fully engaged with.