Dougald Anson is human but his skin is tanned by the sun and winds of Khazak. His clothes and weapons are Khazaki and he speaks Krakenaui more easily than Terrestrial. In other words, he is assimilated or acculturated like Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter the Virginian who was a captain in the Army of the Confederate States but became a chieftain of Thark and a prince of Helium, then Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom which means "Emperor of Emperors, Warlord of Mars." Anderson's Anson operates on a more modest scale but he has fought across Khazak.
Although Anson is our viewpoint character, there is a momentary shift of pov because it is old Chiang Chung-Chen who notices and nods gravely and wearily at the younger Anson's Khazakization.
The Andersonian power politics are more complicated than maybe I want to go into at this time of night. There are conflicting loyalties among human beings and Khazaki alike. And all of this is just on a single planet, not affecting anything else in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Mentioning ERB's Barsoom stories made me wonder if future colonists on Mars will use place names and titles from those stories for real locations and offices there? Or even use that "Kaor" I so geekishly use as a common form of greeting! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
Tho' in fact different species cannot be -biologically- assimilated; John Carter's egg with Dejah Thoris was... shall we say... highly unlikely.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember that! That absurdity of ERB was, shall we say, comical! But ERB wrote so well that I was willing to glide over such bloopers.
Ad astra! Sean
And to be fair, it wasn't quite such a glaring blooper then. People knew a lot less about biology in the early 20th century. Not exactly blameless, but... less obvious.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I can see that. It was only by the time ERB started writing that the shamefully neglected pioneering work of Fr. Gregor Mendel in genetics finally started being taken seriously. And that would affect the scientific understanding of biology.
Ad astra! Sean
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