Saturday 8 October 2022

The Sense Of Adventure

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Diana Crowfeather and her companions fly in a transparent passenger cruiser to the mysterious island of Zacharia on the horizonless planet, Daedalus:

"She hoped that whatever happened would indeed be happy; but whatever it turned out to be, surely an adventure awaited her." (p. 368)

That sense of adventure in a new world is conveyed in:

Poul Anderson's Ensign Flandry (Dominic Flandry on Starkad, then Merseia);

SM Stirling's Conqistador, The Peshawar Lancers and The Sky People;

no doubt many other works (blog readers can make their own lists while I take a bus trip for the day).

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree with the examples you cited, to which I would add Anderson's A CIRCUS OF HELLS. Lots of that sense of adventure in that story!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Of course, it's an adventure in retrospect.

At the time, it's rather... different. You don't know the outcome.

I was charged by a rhinoceros once. That was an adventure... afterwards.

I got this idea from a father's friend describing a fairly desperate cat-and-mouse game they played as scouts in front of a Canadian division in the Low Countries in 1944, with the German rearguards.

"What an adventure!" I said, after he told the story.

"Yeah. It is now," he replied.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

The definition of an adventure: someone ELSE having a miserable time a hundred miles away.

Ad astra! Sean