Horse Trader II

Terminology gets recycled among so many stories. Men are addressed as "Freeman" in Poul Anderson's "Horse Trader" (Space Folk, New York, 1989) as they are in the Polesotechnic League period of his Technic Civilization History. As the phrases "Polesotechnic" and "Horse Trader" suggest, both the individual story and the series deal with trade - although they are very different kinds of trade for different kinds of goods.

Anderson uses the name "Almerik" which I think is a planet in a fantasy series? 

I found "Horse Trader" somewhat anticlimactic - an amazing premise:

"'...something great is in embryo among the stars, a whole new thing, a...a civilization of civilizations. These technical exchanges are just the beginning.'" (p. 277)

- but all we get is a few of the technical exchanges and a detective story, albeit a reasonably neat one. We should have been able to identify the data thief from among the story's assembled cast.

I commented in an earlier post that, in "Horse Trader," Anderson mentions but does not describe the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri A III, leaving us free to imagine that they are the large humanoid warrior women of "Captive of the Centaurianess," although I could not be sure that the author had intended us to make that connection. Well, he does describe the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri A II and they are large humanoid warrior men so I think it is indeed probable that Anderson was remembering "Captive" when he wrote "Horse Trader."

A being from Epsilon Indi is referred to as an "Epsilonian" although there is a temptation to coin the term "Indian."

I just do not buy a succession of aliens that resemble, respectively, a duck, a walrus-mustached centaur, a demon (who sits on his tail like a Merseian) and a Viking. Either the ET's are not out there or they are nothing that we could imagine, which is why Arthur C Clarke kept them off-screen in 2001.

And the story leaves us with a question, although scarcely with a cosmic one: what might "amphitronics" mean?

Horse Trader

I have argued in previous posts that the genres written by Poul Anderson include "historical science fiction." This is further exemplified by the italicized opening passage of his short story, "Horse Trader." (Space Folk, New York, 1989)

The first paragraph, dated AD 250, informs us of a turbine in the temple of Alexandria and of propellers on ships on an Earth-like planet elsewhere in the universe.

In the second paragraph, dated AD 1495, Leonardo da Vinci has made an airplane model but has no way to power it while beings on a planet of another star have built internal-combustion engines but have not thought of flying.

Next, in AD 1942, the Allies need to be able to detect submarines but are unable to develop ultrasonics while the people of Sumanor on Urish know about ultrasonics but "...had never heard of submarines." (p. 262)

Thus, each of these paragraphs presents a historical period with a science fictional perspective.

The action of the story starts in AD 2275 when, thanks to the null-null drive (we have met this before), interstellar journeys can be made at near light speed so that it becomes possible for rational species from different planetary systems to meet and to trade knowledge. No one can do everything well. Those who have developed science and technology in certain directions have not developed them in other directions but now all the discoveries can be exchanged and the first species to travel between stars in this volume of space, humanity, is able to profit by arranging the exchanges.

By coincidence, I had read Anderson's much earlier and very different story, "Captive of the Centaurianess," immediately before starting to read "Horse Trader." I therefore noticed that the Centaurianess is from Alpha Centauri A III and also that the new director of the Bureau of Intercultural Exchange, Technical Division, the "horse traders," was appointed because of his experience with the native civilization of Alpha Centauri A III. In the latter story, Anderson, perhaps deliberately, does not describe this Centaurian race, leaving us free to imagine that they are the large warrior women of the earlier story although this is extremely unlikely.