Orion Shall Rise

Orion Shall Rise is a science fiction novel by American writer Poul Anderson, published in 1983. It is part of his Maurai series.

Premise

The novel is set several hundred years after a devastating nuclear war which has pushed back the level of technology.

The action focuses on four societies:

• The Northwest Union, a technological, clan-based society in the Pacific Northwest of North America
• The Five Nations of the
  Mong
  , a feudal society in the center of North America, where an elite descended from post-war Russian, Chinese and Mongol invaders rules over a serf class descended from American citizens.
• The Maurai Federation, an ecotopian society in the Pacific, dominated by the Maurai peoples of N'Zealann.
• The Domain of Skyholm, a class-based European society located in France, the
  dirigible aerostat. The aerostat is of the STARS type (Solar Thermal Aerostat Research Station), first described in 1980.^[1]

• France is ruled by an English-speaking aristocracy - a precise mirror image of the situation of England after the Norman Conquest.
• The Skyholm aristocrats in France are feudal lords on the ground, and at the same time fly supersonic planes in the air.
• France has a feudal society like in the Middle Ages, and faces across the Rhine a Germany inhabited by barbarian tribes, as in the time of the Roman Empire.
• The Maurai Federation, a powerful maritime empire presided over by a Constitutional Queen, recalls the British Empire under Queen Victoria - but the Maurai Polynesian sexual mores are the very opposite of Victorian morality.
• The Northwest Union, like
  nuclear bombs
  .

References

External links

• Orion Shall Rise title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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