Saturday 27 September 2014

More On Shalmu

First, a few more obscure planets. Flandry visits the human colonies on Starport and New Indra before Shalmu. His ship, Asieneuve, is named after a land mass on Ardeche, a human colony planet of which he had never heard. Many other ships may have the same name. Computers number millions of spacecraft.

Poul Anderson never refers to "grass" on another planet. He always describes the local equivalent. On Shalmu, there is silver psuedograss that whispers when it moves.

The Clan Towns of Att were ordered to enslave the Yanduvar folk since the former have rifles whereas the latter have only poisoned arrows, although also a promising culture now being destroyed. The Council of Att debated long before it was forced to comply. The unwilling slavers are paid, which helps them to pay the increased taxes.

Flandry, noting the illegality and injustice but also proceeding warily while gathering intelligence, lectures his men on the biological and cultural diversity within the Empire:

a planet where high radiation, high mutation rate and food shortage make murder and cannibalism necessary for survival;
intelligent hermaphrodites;
sophonts with more than two sexes;
some that regularly change sex.

Flandry is glossing over the wrongness that they have seen on Shalmu but does say that he will report it and, of course, we know that he will take extreme and irregular measures when he can.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I don't think Flandry glosses over the abuses he and his men saw on Shalmu. I think he made a valid point when saying the sheer mass of data about so many thousands of worlds being received on Terra will inevitably make for delays in taking corrective action on reported abuses. The mere fact Flandry (along with other investigators) was sent to Sector Alpha Crucis to check out the reports the Imperium recieved about Snelund's abuses of power shows the Empire starting to respond to those complaints. And, human beings what they are, Flandry was also aware that inconvenient facts could be swept under the rug!

And we are both aware of the UNCONVENTIONAL measures Flandry took to end the danger to the Empire posed by first Snelund and then McCormac.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I wanted to point out a lack of clarity in the last sentence of your blog piece here. You wrote: "... we know that he will take extreme and irregular MESSAGES when he can." I think you meant to write MEASURES here, instead.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Measures! (Sometimes I spot these mistakes when rereading and no one else has pointed them out.)
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I waited a while, to give you time to notice, before I decided to point it out! (Smiles)

Sean