Thursday 30 August 2018

Species Loyalties?

We make different assessments of the following scenarios:

"Weston turned to Ransom. 'I see,' he said, 'that you have chosen the most momentous crisis in the history of the human race to betray it.'"
-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT p. 120.

Weston had taken Ransom to Mars in the mistaken belief that the Martians wanted a human being as a sacrificial victim.

In Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, some human beings willingly help the mind-controlling alien slugs and, in Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, two men willingly hand a young girl over to monstrous aliens.

"...he renounced his species..." (See Inner Conflict)

On Ikrananka, David Falkayn needs to ensure social stability and does not automatically favor the human community on that planet.

"'There are humans who serve the Roidhunate, too, and not every one has been bought or brainscrubbed; families have lived on Merseian worlds for generations.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT pp. 350-351.

Avalonian human beings fight to remain in the Domain of Ythri and to stay out of the Terran Empire. Later, Dennitzan Merseians are equally determined to stay in the Empire and out of the Roidhunate.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It's been too long since I last read THE PUPPET MASTERS, but did the aliens in that book really find humans WILLING to serve them? Or weren't they all first enslaved by their mind controlling powers?

Yes, in Poul Anderson's works, we see nuances and varying degrees of complexity of the kinds you listed. Humans on Avalon fighting to stay in the Domain, and Merseians on Dennitza equally determined to remain in the Empire.

And I have finally started rereading THE WINTER OF THE WORLD!

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
In THE PUPPET MASTERS, there were some traitors to humanity.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And such traitors are far more blameworthy than people enslaved by the aliens and forced against their will to serve them.

Sean