Victoria Nyanza

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 15.

Venator, making his second appearance, is "...at Victoria Nyanza..." (p. 196) Googling discloses that "Nyanza" means "Lake," thus explaining the name of a fictional planet in Anderson's Technic History. The planet Nyanza is mostly ocean so its name is ironic.

It had never occurred to me to wonder whether "Nyanza" meant anything. This is at least my third reading of The Stars Are Also Fire but only the first time that I remember noticing its use of the word, "Nyanza," familiar from the Technic History.

Read and reread and learn.

The History Of Nyanza

I am checking on Nyanza. See here. Again staying with Sandra Miesel's dates for convenience, "The Game of Glory," set in 3035, tells us that:

"...Nyanza...had been colonized some 500 years back during the breakup of the Commonwealth. It had been made an Imperial client about a century ago, a few abortive revolts were crushed, now there was only a resident - which meant a trouble-free but unimportant and little visited world."
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 306.

This means that Nyanza was colonized in the same period as Avalon and, indeed, Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization shows us:

26th Century  "Wingless"
                          "Rescue on Avalon"
                          Colonization of Nyanza (p. 401)

One earlier main period of colonization was immediately after the discovery of hyperdrive in the twenty second century. That period is called "...the Breakup..." in the Chronology (p. 399) but is this term used in the texts?

Cairncross cannot have been involved in crushing any revolt over a century ago so it seems as if Nyanza revolted again soon after Flandry had been there? I will continue to check the text of "The Game of Glory."

The Chronology And Nyanza

See here.

OK. I think that I have got this straight.

Edwin Cairncross' five-year hitch in the Terran Space Navy was from some time in 3035 to some time in 3040. In 3035, A'u, a large amphibious agent of Merseia, while stranded on Nyanza, incited one Nyanzan ruler, the Sheikh of Rossala, to arm and prepare for insurrection. Somehow, either A'u or Rossalans acting for him got a message to Merseia.

The plan was:

other nations, knowing that Rossala is arming, arm themselves in case Rossala aims to attack them;

a Rossalan harpoonist assassinates the Imperial resident, thus ensuring that there will be no effective space traffic control until he is replaced;

Merseian ships will arrive with heavy weapons;

Rossala will call on other nations to support the insurrection;

any rulers who refuse will be assassinated and replaced.

Although A'u himself is a brilliant organizer, the Rossalans are inept conspirators so that, when Flandry, alerted by Tom Umbolu's dying words on Brae, arrives on Nyanza, he easily follows the trail of the conspiracy. Flandry unites the rest of Nyanza against Rossala, hunts down A'u and speaks of laying traps for the expected Merseian gunrunners. It is at that stage that the Naval forces in which Cairncross is serving will come to be involved.

Thus when, in A Stone In Heaven, Poul Anderson, summarizing Cairncross' career to date, mentions a five-year hitch involving both suppression of a Nyanzan revolt and the Syrax confrontation, this summary fits perfectly into the Chronology of Technic Civilization.

More Details On Nyanza

Poul Anderson's ocean-covered planet, Nyanza, is the diametric opposite of Frank Herbert's desert planet, Dune. I prefer Nyanza. Whereas Dune appears in six novels by Herbert, many more novels by his successors, one feature film and one TV series, Nyanza is the setting of only a single short story, "The Game of Glory."

This story presents a wealth of information about the fictional Nyanzan environment. Several of the details are presented only once and very briefly but they nevertheless demonstrate that a series of novels could have been set on this single planet.

Tessa Hoorn, Lightmistress of Little Skua in Jairnovaunt, tells Dominic Flandry that:

Jairnovaunters harpoon the kraken, a beast with more bulk than the harpooner's boat;
"'...T'Chaka Kruger farms a great patch of beanweed in the Lesser Sargasso...'" (Captain Flandry, p. 314);
commons and sometimes captains scrape low-tide reefs for shells or dive for sporyx;
there are many professions common to society on any planet;
"'...wandering boats of actors...'" (ibid.) come and go as they please.

A focus of the action of the story is the permanently submerged area of Uhunhu but only one part of one sentence tells us the nature of this place:

"...the weed-grown steeps of Uhunhu rose beneath him, monstrous grey dolmens and menhirs raised by no human hands, sunken a million years ago..." (p. 336)

Approaching Nyanza

"The Game of Glory" (for reference, see here) tells us another of Flandry's hobbies. When he establishes radio contact with Nyanza:

"Most of him was listening to the fellow's accent. The inexhaustible variations on Anglic were a hobby of his." (II, p. 308)

How many planets does Poul Anderson describe as seen from space? Is this the best way to see a planet? Here is Nyanza:

"Nyanza shone before him, the clearest and most beautiful blue of his life, streaked with white cloud-belts and shuddering with great auroral streamers." (II, p. 307)

There are two moons. The fellow on the radio explains that there are:

no continents;
a medium-sized island, Altla;
rocks and reefs, "...submerged at double high tide, or even at Loa high." (II, p. 308)

Is Loa one of the moons? Is it named after the Loa? How many planets in the Technic History are mostly covered with water?

Credibility Gap

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

the planet Scotha is inhabited by horned, white-skinned, sword-wielding barbarians with an elfin Queen;

Alfzar is inhabited by small, blue, sword-wielding hunters of winged dragons;

Nyanza has been colonized by Terrestrials - caucasoids on the single island and harpoon-gun-wielding Africans on, or in, the planet-covering sea.

These sound not just like different planets but like different universes yet Captain Flandry's adventures take him from Scotha to Alfzar to Nyanza. Scotha and Alfzar not only take us back to the pulp magazine space opera of the early 1950s but also seem to transport us both backwards and sideways in time to an alternative universe where sword fights and spaceships coexisted whereas "The Game of Glory," featuring Nyanza, reads more like something that might happen in the near future, assuming only the invention of a faster than light drive.

However, in an inhabited galaxy, different inhabited planets are bound to be at different stages of development and, given interstellar travel, the discordant stages will interact. Terrestrials might colonize some planets and sell spaceships to barbarians on others.

Nyanza!

By George! I have just reread four earlier posts summarizing information about Poul Anderson's fictional planet, Nyanza. Here they are again.

What a wealth of colorful details that we cannot possibly remember after reading a story, that we cannot even appreciate fully on reading a story once! And all of Anderson's massive output is like that.

I encourage every blog reader to:

read or reread "The Game of Glory," about Nyanza;
tick off the details that I have listed;
look for any that I have missed;
please inform me of any errors or inconsistencies on my part.

I hope that this blog does what it says, encourages appreciation of Poul Anderson's works.

Pragmatic Politics

On Nyanza, Derek Ombolu is complicit in treason and murder. He was a party to the conspiracy involving the assassination of the Imperial resident and the attempted assassination of Dominic Flandry and he himself would have seized control in Jairnovaunt if its hereditary Commander had not supported the revolution.

Flandry does not yet know all this but does know that Derek is anti-Imperial and that his deceased brother had been well informed about a revolutionary conspiracy. Flandry and Derek's father fake the latter's assassination, thus turning Derek against the insurrection. Derek kills the assassin, joins the alliance against the insurrectionists and harpoons the Merseian agent, A'u, thus saving Flandry's life. Flandry could arrest Derek for treason but instead helps him to make a beneficial marriage alliance. All's well that ends well.

When Derek first meets Flandry, he says:

"'I've heard about Brae, and more.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 321.

We would like to know about the "...and more." There are two differences between Brae and Nyanza. First, Braeans are non-human whereas Nyanzans are human colonials. This should not make any moral difference and it is to Derek's credit that he protests against the conquest of Brae. Secondly, however, Brae was indeed brutally conquered whereas Nyanza has:

"'...nay suffered much more than a resident and some taxes -'" (p. 317)

- and, as Flandry adds, taxation would have been higher when each Nyanzan nation had to organize its own defense. So how credible is it that some Nyanzans feel murderous hatred towards Imperials?

Continuity In The Flandry Series

The opening trilogy of novels, written later, is carefully constructed so that it is fully consistent both internally and in relation to the remainder of the Flandry series.

In "Tiger by The Tail," (January, 1951) Captain Dominic Flandry sabotages the barbarian Scothani empire.

In "Honorable Enemies," (May, 1951) Captain Flandry, described as "'...the single-handed conqueror of Schothania...,'" learns how to lie to the telepath, Aycharaych. (Poul Anderson, Agent Of The Terran Empire, London, 1977, p. 62)

In "The Warriors from Nowhere," (1954) Captain Flandry, who has a superior called Admiral Fenross, a Shalmuan servant called Chives and a private spaceship not yet called the Hooligan, prevents the secession of the Taurian Sector from the Terran Empire.

In "The Game of Glory," (1958) Captain Sir Dominic Flandry learns how to lie to a telepath (details in "Honorable Enemies") and travels alone in "...a high-speed flitter..." to the planet Nyanza, where he prevents a rebellion. (Flandry Of Terra, London, 1976, p. 13)

In "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959): Flandry has come Home from Nyanza; Aycharaych congratulates him on l'affaire Nyanza; Flandry's superior is Vice Admiral Fenross; Flandry still has Chives and a private spaceship, now called the Hooligan.

In "A Message in Secret,"(1959/1961) Flandry has no private spaceship and must travel as a passenger.

"The Plague of Masters" (1961) is a direct sequel to and fully consistent with "A Message in Secret."

In A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, (1975) Flandry again has Chives and the Hooligan, works to prevent rebellion in the Taurian Sector and opposes Aycharaych - for the final time.

I am pressed for time today but will comment on the above soon.

Tramp Ships, Flitters And The Hooligan

Despite representing the Terran Empire, Dominic Flandry had travelled to Altai as a passenger in a Betelgeusean merchant ship. When Terran Navy ships arrived to rescue him, he could have returned at least as far as Catawrayannis in one of them but instead preferred to travel in another Betelgeusean ship to the Imperial port at Spica VI. From there, he would have returned to Terra in the luxury liner, the Empress Maia. However, the second merchant ship stopped at Orma where Flandry learned about the self-isolating human colony planet, Unan Besar, and hired a space flitter to go and investigate. On a later mission, he took a high-speed flitter to travel from Brae to Nyanza. The main point here is that Flandry did not as yet have his private spaceship, the Hooligan.

Shortly after returning home from Nyanza, Flandry is in possession of the Hooligan and is served by the Shalmuan, Chives, whom, we later learn, he had acquired, initially as a slave, while outside the Solar System. I deduce that Flandry had acquired Chives before going to Altai, that Chives had remained on Terra while Flandry was on Altai and Unan Besar and that Flandry completed the purchase of the Hooligan shortly after returning from Nyanza.

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VI

Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012).

Contents:

"The Plague of Masters" (1961), pp. 1-147;
"Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959), pp. 149-301;
"The Warriors from Nowhere" (1954), pp. 303-337;
A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (1975), pp. 339-606.

My rule of thumb is that a novel is 100+ pages in length. By that criterion, Sir Dominic Flandry..., like Volume IV, Young Flandry, collects three novels. "The Warriors from Nowhere," written earlier, is much shorter and retroactively became a brief prequel or prelude to A Knight...

I divide the original Captain Flandry series into three sections:

A Tetralogy
"Tiger by the Tail" (January, 1951)
"Honorable Enemies" (May, 1951)
"The Game of Glory" (1958)
"Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1959)

A Diptych
"A Message in Secret" (1959/1961)
"The Plague of Masters" (December, 1960-January, 1961)

On Its Own
"The Warriors from Nowhere" (see above)

The Tetralogy
In "Tiger by the Tail," Flandry conquers Scothania.
In "Honorable Enemies," Flandry is referred to as the conqueror of Scothania and learns how to lie to the telepath, Aycharaych.
In the opening passage of "The Game of Glory," it is mentioned that Flandry learns how to lie to a telepath; then he visits Nyanza.
In "Hunters of the Sky Cave," Flandry has returned Home from Nyanza, is congratulated on l'affaire Nyanza and has a showdown, although not the final showdown, with Aycharaych. Flandry captures the telepath but the Merseians insist on a prisoner exchange.

Thus, these four works are a continuous sequence.

The Diptych
In "A Message in Secret," Flandry is on Altai.
In "The Plague of Masters," Flandry visits Unan Besar while returning Home from Altai.

Thus, these two works are a sequence.

I think that we should read first the tetralogy, then the diptych.

Nyanzan Discontent

It seems that we can discuss the history and politics of Technic civilization endlessly as if this were real history. Rereading "The Game of Glory," we are reminded that the planet Nyanza:

"...had been made an Imperial client about a century ago, a few abortive revolts were crushed, now there was only a resident - which meant a trouble-free but unimportant and little visited world." (II, pp. 306-307)

So Nyanza, like Ansa, Aeneas and Brae, was incorporated into the Empire by force. Was that necessary? Some Nyanzans saw reasons to rebel but now the planet is thought to be trouble-free although this turns out not to be the case. What are the current reasons for discontent? We are not told, unless I find something by continuing to reread. Fiction is less detailed than reality. In reality, there would have to be reasons but in fiction they might not be stated. 

Earlier in the Technic History, the reasons for conflict within the Polesotechnic League were explicit. Cartelization was mentioned in "Lodestar" and came to a head in Mirkheim.

Although Flandry does not know of any reasons for discontent on Nyanza, he recognizes that there might be some:

"...the days and weeks and months between stars let their systems drift culturally apart - let hell brew for years, unnoticed till it boiled over -..." (II, p. 308)

That thought will lead to a comparison between the Technic and Psychotechnic Histories. Whereas students of history study a single timeline, students of future histories are able to compare alternative timelines. World War III occurs in one but not in another etc.

Cairncross

I would not have believed it possible but Poul Anderson's character, Edwin Cairncross, led to a lengthy digression through several posts to Anderson's fictional planet, Nyanza. But what of Cairncross himself?

I will shortly reread some passages featuring Cairncross solo, then Cairncross in dialogue first with Dominic Flandry, then with Emperor Gerhart. I expect, therefore, to have more to post about Edwin Cairncross. Meanwhile, however, a certain amount has already been posted. See here. (Scroll down.)

Cairncross' ambitions are cosmic in scope and could have been pursued without contemplating illegality. He had ordered the building of an ornamental battlement:

"...because he wanted to feel his kinship to Shi Huang Ti, Charlemagne, Suleiman the Magnificent, Pyotr the Great, every man who had ever been dominant on Terra."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 26.

Bad news. Less thought of self-glorification would have made Cairncross a far greater ruler. The model of a selfless ruler in Poul and Karen Anderson's works is Gratillonius, the last King of Ys.

(Coincidence: while posting about the oceanic planet, Nyanza, I have meanwhile read about a submerged city inhabited by amphibians in China Mieville's The Scar.)

Seas

On Earth, the World Ocean covers two thirds of the planetary surface.

On Poul Anderson's fictitious planet, Nyanza, a single ocean covers everything except one island and some tidal reefs.

Anderson's fictitious planet, Kraken, is also described as oceanic so it is appropriate that, late in the Flandry period of the Technic History, a Krakener man is married to a Nyanzan woman.

By coincidence, I have interrupted rereading Anderson's "The Game of Glory," set on Nyanza, to start reading China Mieville's The Scar, only to discover that this fantasy novel begins with a four page section describing a sea, the life in the sea and an event affecting one specimen of that life. This section has no speech, just sights, sounds and sensations of the sea.

I am getting the message that the sea is important. One of Anderson's Time Patrol stories hauntingly links the deaths of seafarers, spacefarers, timefarers...

Another Note On Other Reading

I read one China Mieville fantasy novel a while back and have just been given two more. In Iron Council (see here), according to the blurb, "...a mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion..." This sounds familiar to fans of Alan Moore, whose "Codename V" now inspires British demonstrators. If I continue to post about Mieville's novels, it will be on one of the other blogs.

A pause in rereading Poul Anderson's works seems advisable although I will meanwhile continue to reread at least one short story, "The Game of Glory," in order to relate it chronologically to Edwin Cairncross' Naval career. See recent posts here and here.

I did not realize until it happened that rereading a passage about Flandry in Archopolis would lead to a reexamination of the Chronology of Technic Civilization with reference to events on Nyanza or that this in turn would recall how imaginatively rich a fictitious world Nyanza is. It remains possible to wander back and forth through the Technic History noticing new details and interconnections.

Flandry's Legacy: Back Cover Blurb

THE LONG NIGHT COMES - AND AFTER IT, A NEW DAWN
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), back cover (blurb written by compiler, Hank Davis?).

I have thought that Long Night And Dawn could make an appropriate title for a concluding volume of the History of Technic Civilization. However, my concluding volume would collect the four works set after the Terran Empire but not also the last two novels set during Flandry's lifetime.

The blurb continues:

"Sir Dominic Flandry is now an admiral but takes little joy in his new rank. He sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall on the galaxy."

Not on the whole galaxy: the Empire rules just some of the terrestroid planets in a four hundred light year diameter sphere near the edge of one spiral arm and it is only one interstellar power. Other powers in known space are the Roidhunate of Merseia, the Domain of Ythri and the Dispersal of Ymir. The Dispersal, based on gas giants, not on terrestroids, overlaps the Empire, Roidhunate and Domain but may be much vaster.

"His consolation is that measures he has taken while fighting to postpone the final collapse may shorten the coming galactic dark age and hasten the rise of a new interstellar civilization."

Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon tried to shorten a dark age and to hasten a new civilization but not also to postpone the imminent collapse. This blurb makes the Flandry series sound like an alternative Foundation Trilogy but, we must add, an incomparably better Foundation Trilogy.

Flandry says:

"'I'd like to have Nyanza well populated. When the Long Night comes for Terra, somebody will have to carry on. It might as well be you.'"
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 339. 

On Dennitza, he and his fiancee, Kossara, anticipate:

"Service...staff rather than field Intelligence...for the future, not the poor wayworn Empire but a world he too could believe in, the world of their own blood."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 543.

Later, he tells Miriam Abrams:

"'The sophont races will survive. In due course, they'll build fascinating new civilizations. Cultures of mixed species look especially promising. Consider Avalon already.'"
-Flandry's Legacy, p. 75.

Yes and, in any case, despite the human element in its population, Avalon is outside the Empire, in the Domain of Ythri. We last saw Avalon immediately after the Terran War, before Flandry's birth, so I would like to have seen it again.

"'...I'm not optimistic about this period we are in: but it can be made less terrible than it'd otherwise be. And that isn't so little, is it - buying years for billions of sentient beings, that they can live in?'" (ibid.)

Here we return to the theme of postponing collapse.

When civilization is being restored after the Long Night, we are told that the planet Atheia:

"...was supposed to have retained or regained almost as many amenities as Old Earth knew in its glory..." (p. 665)

The Long Night meant no economic basis for building spaceships:

"'That meant little trade between planets. Which meant trouble on most of 'em.'" (p. 458)

But not necessarily on all of 'em, maybe not on Atheia. Roan Tom gains power on Kraken. Vixenites found New Vixen which later becomes part of the Commonalty. Thus, Flandry sees hope in Nyanza, Dennitza and Avalon and, later, there is the realization of hope on Atheia, Kraken and Vixen.

To return to the Flandry's Legacy blurb:

"In the meantime, he'll always be ready for one more battle against the Empire's enemies."

We return from Flandry's future to his present, where he is still fighting.

"A Stone In Heaven - When the daughter of Flandry's mentor asks for help, he intervenes to thwart a would-be dictator's plans to seize control of the Empire."

Flandry does indeed intervene but there is much more than that in this novel:

life on Ramnu;

the sense of Hermes as a complex society and economy within the Empire;

Flandry's exposition of the decline of the Empire;

his autumnal affair with Miriam - "They walked on into the autumn." (p. 188)

"The Game Of Empire - Flandry's daughter, Diana, and her felinelike alien friend have discovered a Merseian conspiracy against the Empire. Even with the help of her illustrious father, can they stop it in time?"

Yes. We know, unless we are reading the Technic History for the very first time and in chronological order of fictitious events, that the Empire will not be incorporated into the Roidhunate but will simply fall, bequeathing not Merseian rule but interstellar barbarism. Anderson's texts do not tell us what became of the Roidhunate but Sandra Miesel reasonably guesses in her Chronology of Technic Civilization that, in the early fourth millennium:

"The Empire and Merseia wear each other out." (p. 803)

Again, there is more in this last Flandry era novel than interstellar intrigue, mainly the fascinating planets, Imhotep and Daedalus, and some new perspectives on the earlier history.

"Plus four novellas, all in this seventh volume of the first complete edition of Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization saga."

Those four novellas are the only works set during the Long Night and its aftermath so they deserved a bit more discussion in the blurb!

While googling for Technic Civilization covers, I learned that, whereas Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire is Volume 5 of The Technic Civilization Saga, Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire is a separate edition, collecting A Circus Of Hells and The Rebel Worlds.

Humanoid Natives Or Human Colonials

I refer to the Captain Flandry stories in the order in which they appear in The Technic Civilization Saga. The first five are:

"Tiger by the Tail"
"Honorable Enemies"
"The Game of Glory"
"A Message in Secret"
"A Plague of Masters"

Each story focuses on a different fictional extra-solar planet:

Scotha
Alfzar
Nyanza
Altai
Unan Besar

Scothans and Alfzarians are humanoid natives whereas Nyanzans, Altaians and Unan Bezarians are human colonials. Thus, there are two narrative strands. Human interstellar travelers either meet inhabitants of extra-solar planets or colonize uninhabited planets. However, the two strands converge:

Merseians are active either covertly or openly in the first four stories;
Alfzarians transport Flandry to Altai and Unan Besar.

I still feel that a tall, white-skinned, sword-fighting Scothan visiting Nyanza would be like an Elf making a cameo appearance in a contemporary novel: "It's the wrong genre!"

Star Trek has extra-solar humanoids who would make more sense as human colonials. The four post-Imperial installments of Poul Anderson's Technic History feature planetary populations that are descended from human colonists but have been isolated for long periods.

Flandry's Deductions About Nyanza

Dominic Flandry:

travels five parsecs from Brae to Nyanza in a high-speed flitter;

lands at a spaceport of grav-grid, field and buildings with forest to west and south, a small ancient city to the east and a cloudless sky above blue ocean to the north;

is flown to the resident's mansion in an aircar by the Portmaster;

from the air, sees steep narrow streets of native stone with many pedestrians but few vehicles and busy modern docks where -

- a majority of sailing ships implies a leisurely, aesthetic life-style;
but their hydrodynamic design implies appreciation of efficiency;
sea-water processors, factories and sea weed delivered to a plastics plant imply that most Nyanzans harvest the ocean and trade with this one island for industrial products and technology.

The widow of the murdered resident is an Ayres of Antarctica. Thus, that Terrestrial continent is occupied in the Imperial period. I seem to remember something about the urbanization of Antarctica in the Psychotechnic History? 

Shortening The Dark Age

According to the blurb on the back of Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), Dominic Flandry:

"...sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall upon the galaxy. His consolation is that measures he has taken while fighting to postpone the final collapse may shorten the coming galactic dark age and hasten the rise of a new interstellar civilization."

Sounds familiar? Replace Flandry with Seldon and Terran Empire with Galactic Empire and we are almost reading a summary of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. But there are a few other differences:

Asimov did not use the term "Long Night," which Anderson perhaps overuses;

Asimov capitalized the "g" of "galaxy;"

Seldon did not fight to postpone the Fall of the Galactic Empire but did try to manipulate events to shorten the dark age;

the Terran Empire governs a four hundred light year diameter volume of space which is way short of the entire galaxy;

Flandry hoped to shorten the dark age by strengthening individual planets like Nyanza and Dennitza, not by applying a predictive social science.

"'I'd like to have Nyanza well populated. When the Long Night comes for Terra, somebody will have to carry on. It might as well be you.'" (Captain Flandry, p. 339)

If anyone thinks that Anderson's History of Technic Civilization plagiarizes Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, then think again. It is different and much better.

Another Summary II

"Afterword: The Price of Buying Time."

Sandra Miesel presents a comprehensive list of motives for extra-solar colonization:

adventure

profit

advancement

social and political experimentation

preservation of cultural heritage

She adds that the cultural motivation was paramount in the cases of:

Russo-Mongol Altai

African Nyanza

Slavic Dennitza

I think that, in the case of Nyanza, Miesel goes beyond what Anderson's texts tell us but nevertheless, in this context, her extrapolation is legitimate as when she discusses alien influences on humanity:

"These exotic stimuli sparked the creative energies of Technic civilization to new peaks of excellence because they broadened the range of options available to each individual." (p. 238)

In "How To Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," the Festival of Man is a reaction against alien influences. Later, in The People of the Wind, human beings on Avalon are strongly influenced by their fellow colonists from Ythri to such an extent that many young people join choths and adopt an entirely Ythrian lifestyle.