"Monster" can mean just "something very big." When reports started to reach newspapers about something moving in a Scottish loch, someone estimated the object's size, someone else remarked that, in that case, it was a monster, meaning "big," and thus the term, "Loch Ness Monster," was born.
In Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet, women stranded on the planet Atlantis refer to male human beings as "Men" and to non-human beings as "Monsters." Although there had been no suggestion that aliens were monstrous, the word "Monster," capitalized, had come to be applied to them. Thus, when a man, Bertram Davis, arrives, it is easy to denounce him as a "Monster" that should be killed whereas, as Davis himself points out, even if he were an alien, there would have been no need to kill him. Instead, he could have been asked to reestablish contact between Atlantean women and Galactic men. But, of course, the Doctors' order to kill Davis was based on class interest, not on reason, and words with double meanings are always helpful to confuse an issue.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But the Doctors were nor thinking in terms of CLASS. They were thinking in terms of power politics and how they could keep that power.
Which, btw, would turn out to be pretty futile, even if only "Monsters" had discovered Atlantis. Because it would not be long before MEN arrived. Putting an end to the Doctors monopoly of wealth and power.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I meant "class" in an economic, not just a social, sense. As you say, "wealth and power."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And if political entities on Atlantis had not been so fragmented and mutually hostile, the Doctors would have been faced by pushback from larger states wanting a cut of that power and wealth.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment