The Old Ways

If globalization ends the old ways, then how much more will interstellar contact?

See:

Old Wilwidh
The old order changeth...

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History:

"It was old Khazak that fought, the planet of warriors, and, even as he hewed and danced and slew, Janazik thought bleakly that he was trying to end the gory magnificence of that age; he was bringing civilization and with it the doom of his own kind. Khazak of the future would not be the same world."
-"Star Ship," p. 298.

His old comradeship with Anse ends a few pages later.

"My Grievous Wound"

See Ages Pass/Passages.

David Falkayn says that the wound to the old order of things is deep. Arthur says that old order changeth.

Arthur says that he will heal his grievous wound in "Avilion" (Avalon). Falkayn will found a colony on a planet to be renamed "Avalon."

Idylls of the King and the History of Technic Civilization celebrate good times remembered and new times started.

Ages Pass/Passages

Ages begin and pass:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'
"...it is enough that we are on our way."
-see here.

"...Falkayn thought, This was a grand era in its way. I too will miss it."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XX, p. 266.

Falkayn again:

"'The wound to the old order of things is too deep...'"
-op. cit., XXI, p. 282.

How should Falkayn and his contemporaries respond? They might take advice from Tennyson's Arthur:

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
“Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?	35
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led	40
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolv’d
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,	45
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”
And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

The End Of Camelot

We quoted from Idylls Of The King here.

Other lines from the same poem bear comparison with Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, e.g.:

For now I see the true old times are dead,

 But now the whole Round Table is dissolv’d

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

 And, as an expression of aspiration:

But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst—if indeed I go	65
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)—
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns	70
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.”

King Arthur And Van Rijn

Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), pp. 633-680.

An Ythrian tells Nicholas van Rijn:

"'In the end, God the Hunter strikes every being and everything which beings have made. Upon your way of life I see His shadow. Let the new come to birth in peace.'" (p. 680)

We have contemplated King Arthur in Poul Anderson's works here. Now let us quote Arthur in circumstances similar to those experienced by van Rijn:

And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.