When "sf" stands for "speculative fiction," the author - speculatively - imagines a future that has to be significantly different from either the past or the present whereas, when "science fiction" means space opera, action-adventure fiction with sf trappings, it suffices to project familiar features of the historical past into a colourful but implausible futuristic setting. Thus, Dominic Flandry fights with a sword in the first two Captain Flandry instalments but never again as the scenarios seem to be modernized. The human-colonized planets, Nyanza, Altai and Unan Besar, scarcely seem to share the same universe with the humanoid-inhabited planets, Scotha and Alfzar. It is as if Flandry has travelled through time as well as through space and, in a sense, he has time travelled from the pulp magazine period to a later phase of sf. The Flandry series incorporates both space opera and speculative fiction.
Early in "Honorable Enemies," Flandry secures at his waist the sword that is required to be worn in the presence of the Alfzarian Sartaz. The sword is a "Chekov's gun" since this story will climax with a sword fight between Flandry and Aycharaych.
The story's heroine, Aline, shows past attitudes projected into an imperial future:
"'We Terran women are expected to be subordinate, aren't we?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Honorable Enemies" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 277-302 AT p. 289.
Aline exploits this subordinate role. By remaining in the background and out of sight, she avoids the attention of the telepath Aycharaych who focuses his attention on the alpha male Flandry whom Aline has drugged to believe whatever he is told: how to lie to a telepath.
6 comments:
Human beings fall into repetitive patterns; note that Cuba and North Korea had Communist revolutions... which resulted in them becoming hereditary monarchies. Romania was headed the same way, until the regime was overthrown.
So drawing on history is perfectly legitimate in imagining the future; 'no new thing under the sun', as the saying goes.
Soldiers don't carry swords any more... but they still carry knives, and fight with them sometimes.
See this for a discussion of how to make such things plausible.
The comments are an essential part of the discussion, and aside from sword & spaceship, get into spaceship & horse.
http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2007/09/spaceship-and-sword.html
Jerry Pournelle did a good job of this with his "Co-Dominium" future history; that's one in which the first phase of human interstellar expansion takes place under a political system which is essentially an alliance between the USA and the USSR to rule the world.
It's focused on stability -- so it deliberately discourages new scientific discoveries, and it also discourages industrial development on colony planets, while also making Earth more stable by dumping political dissidents, discontented minority groups, and the lumpenproletariat on the colonies where they furnish cheap labor.
Hence you have interstellar travel (discovered during the early phase of the Co-Dominium, before stasis set in) and then planets where horses are the primary method of doing farm work, even if the capital city has a fusion-power plant.
It's a perverse system, and the characters in the books know it, but the alternatives are so ghastly...
Thank you for making some sense of Pournelle's grim future history series!
Kaor, Paul!
This is an old disagreement we have: I don't think futuristic uses for swords to be that implausible. Both versions of "Tiger By The Tail" has Flandry teling Prince Cerdic that SCIENTIFIC fencing was popular with many humans in the Empire. I'm sure you can find fencing enthusiasts in Lancaster if you looked.
And I too enjoyed Pournelle's Co-Dominium stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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