This chapter begins:
"Winter came early to the northlands." (p. 383)
That sentence reads like a film sub-title or voice-over. The paragraph describes "...snow endless across the plains...," (p. 383) ideal for a visual presentation.
"The Game of Glory" begins:
"A murdered man on a winter planet gave Flandry his first clue."
-Poul Anderson, "The Game of Glory" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 303-339 AT I, p. 303.
I imagine that sentence as a slow voice-over for a scene of a few high snowflakes before the action kicks off with the second sentence:
"Until then, he had only known that a monster fled Conjumar..." (ibid.)
I would once have asked whether it was not Terrocentric to write about the familiar phenomenon of snow on extra-solar planets but now so many terrestroid exo-planets have been detected or hypothesised that hopefully it is only a matter of time before a technological civilization is discovered - and maybe one that can show Terrestrials how to do it right.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Snow does not have to always be frozen H2O. Other chemical combinations are possible which, when frozen and precipitated thru a planetary atmosphere, can be snow.
Your last paragraph, saying "...that hopefully it is only a matter of time before a technological is discovered - and maybe one that can show Terrestrials how to do it right," arouses varied thoughts in me. The optimistic scenario has wise and benevolent non human Elders doing as you plainly hope for. The pessimistic alternative is me wondering if our First Contact with non-humans will be with an aggressive and warlike species analogous to Larry Niven's Kzinti, or far worse, Stirling's Draka (or like his Shadowspawn?). Or maybe all intelligent races mankind might come to know will be no better than us!
Altho Anderson played with the idea of wise and benevolent Elder Races in some of his stories, I think it's fair to say he was skeptical of such notions. He seemed to lean most to the last alternative I suggested in my immediately preceding paragraph.
Ad astra! Sean
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