Saturday 30 May 2015

Two Volumes? II

See previous post.

But then, thinking this through again - and please tell me if I get anything wrong -, that tax-hungry Dominancy is presented in Chapter 21 of Starfarers which is the altered form of "Ghetto." It becomes necessary to compare the texts of "Ghetto," collected in Maurai And Kith, and of Starfarers, Chapter 21. We find several textual alterations including this one: the regime that is called "the Dominancy" in Starfarers had been called "the Star Empire" in the original version. That explains why members of its highest caste are called the Star-Free.

Thus, in the original version of the History, it was to be understood that the increased taxation introduced in "Ghetto" had preceded the physical suppression that was later referred back to in "The Horn of Time the Hunter." Did that suppression occur during the long period when Envoy was away from Earth in Starfarers?

Poul Anderson wrote:

"...I made "Ghetto," much revised, a part of my novel Starfarers. I was going to incorporate "The Horn of Time the Hunter" as well, but Karen convinced me that it was too dark."
-Poul Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), p. 137.

I think that:

the several stories that Anderson revised for later republication should be preserved in both versions;

the way to do this with the Kith stories is to publish both a three-story collection and the later novel;

thus, in the original History, the Star Empire oppressively taxes and later physically suppresses the Kith, whereas, in the Starfarers future history, the Dominancy oppressively taxes the Kith but is later superseded by the Governance and other regimes.

No comments: