Reader FAQs: Altren Edition
Happy one year (and a few days) to Last Window to the Old World! Thanks to everyone who took a chance on my weird space nerds (affectionate) over the past year.
I’ve also gotten a fair number of questions in that time about the world and how it works, and that’s what we’re here to answer today!
Q: How many people live on Altren, anyway?
In Liam and Ellie’s time, Altren’s total population is around 4 million (so roughly as many people as live in Los Angeles). That includes both Altren City and the various Agsteads. So it’s not a tiny populace by any means…but still pretty small for an entire planet, especially compared to the billions of people living on Plenisar.
Q: What’s the relationship like between the two planets? Any resentment about the Altreni basically leaving the Plenisari to die?
150 years ago, there absolutely was resentment from Plenisar - particularly around how many seats on the colony ships went to various VIPs, while average Plenisari people were left to pick up the pieces.
In the present day, however, Plenisar lives in an era of abundance thanks to Maria Hartford’s successful terraforming project, and Altren is more of a curiosity than anything. The two worlds are in frequent communication, and a lot of Plenisari popular media makes it over to Altren (Altreni media to Plenisar, not so much).
At the same time, the Plenisari don’t feel any particular need to step in and help Altren with their materials crisis. They might not be actively angry at the present-day Altreni - after all, the people who actually did Plenisar dirty are long dead - but they’re also not inclined to put themselves out preventing Altren’s chickens coming home to roost. I might describe the current Plenisar attitude toward Altren as “indifference with a side of schadenfreude.”
Q: So with Altren’s materials problem, they can’t reproduce most of their electronics. Does that mean society is headed back to the Middle Ages?
It’s more like they’re headed back to the 1940s. Things like electricity and landline telephones and broadcast media are in no danger of disappearing. Most of their transportation is by train, which will keep working just fine.
What they are going to lose, besides just the last vestiges of personal electronics, is a lot of their automation. We’ve already seen that the loss of agricultural robots is starting to impact farmers like Ellie’s family. A lot of industries on Altren are about to become more manual, which also has implications for labor needs (and as we saw above, Altren’s population is decently sized but not enormous).
Another serious impact will be in medicine, as Altren’s doctors gradually lose access to the advanced tools brought over from Plenisar. Again, they won’t be exactly be back to leeches and whiskey, but diagnosing and treating serious illnesses is going to become a lot harder.
Q: So is “temporal physics” science or magic?
Wouldn’t you and Liam both like to know.
Got a burning question for the next FAQ? Let me know at lena@lenaalisonknight.com