Wednesday 22 August 2012

The Fleet Of Stars IV

In Poul Anderson's The Fleet Of Stars (New York, 1997), Chapter 3, download Guthrie is en route from Beta Hydri to Sol via Alpha Centauri. He crosses interstellar distances switched off, the download equivalent of suspended animation. Chapter 17 begins:

"GUTHRIE WOKE." (p.210)

Thus, he is entering the Solar System. Meanwhile, Anderson has used Chapters 4-16 to advance the future history. He has told us neither about the Lunarians in the Outer Solar System and at Alpha Centuari nor about the Terrans at three other extrasolar colonies but about new characters in the Inner Solar System:

Terrans on Earth, Luna and Mars;
metamorphic seals in the Pacific;
Lunarians on Mars.

Some Lunarian Martians are in armed resistance to the cybercosm on Earth. They know that the Lunarians who had colonized the asteroid Proserpina in the Kuiper Belt have spread through the Outer System. One Pacific community, inspired by reports from extrasolar colonies, wants to begin terraforming Mars. We are conscious of having moved into a later period although one that has followed by sociopolitical processes from events described in previous volumes. If only it could go on forever...

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