Our introduction to the Intergalactic Empire is through Yannahochia, a planet of Carpet Makers where the caste system is more rigid than that in Manusmriti. The novel opens with an archaic tale, one reminiscent of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, in premise and narrative. Like Guin, Andrea Eschbach constructs an alternate universe in The Carpet Makers, which is a reflection of the world we think we have left behind, yet latently existing within ourselves. A novelist, knowingly or unknowingly, invents elaborate circumstantial lies to describe certain aspects of our psychological reality with metaphors. Rumors are spreading that the immortal Emperor got killed by rebels, that not one carpet ever reached the emperors palace and that there are thousands and thousands of planets producing these carpets each of them believing they are the only ones producing them.In an introduction to the 1976 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin wrote that the genre of science fiction was descriptive, not predictive. Every other year there comes a royal spaceship to transport tens of thousands finished hair carpets away to the emperors palace and it’s been like that for thousands of years. They are producing these carpets to decorate the walls of the star palace, the residence of the immortal Emperor on a planet far away close to the center of his empire. For them the production of the hair carpets is a holy task. The planets population is aware that their planet is a part of a giant empire that contains millions of other planets settled by man and ruled by the Emperor. From the money one carpet maker gets for his carpet, his son lives his whole life while producing his own carpet to earn the money for his son and so on. During his lifetime a carpet maker only finishes one single carpet because it is a highly complicated piece of art. The highest caste are the carpet makers, men who are producing carpets made from the hair of their wives and daughters.

My intro to the book: At the beginning the book describes a planet where the people live in a caste system within medieval conditions.

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach is worth a read. Only his first book was translated into English. The author is pretty successful in Germany. Hi, I just wanted to recommend a scifi book that most people probably don't have on their radar.